Re Heagney and Federated Storemen and Packers Union of Australia; Ex parte ACT Employers Federation [1976] HCA 32

High Court of Australia Barwick C.J. Stephen, Mason, Jacobs and Murphy JJ. Re Heagney and Federated Storemen and Packers Union of Australia; Ex parte ACT Employers Federation [1976] HCA 32

ORDER Order nisi discharged.

Cur. adv. vult.

The following written judgments were delivered:—

1976, June 21 Barwick C.J.

The respondent Commissioner, appointed as such under the Conciliation and Arbitration Act, 1904-1975 Cth ("the Act"), found that an industrial dispute extending beyond the limits of any one State had arisen between the prosecutor and the respondent Union. The existence of the dispute depended entirely upon the failure of the prosecutors and other companies and persons to accede to the terms of a demand in writing made upon them by the respondent Union. No question of an industrial dispute otherwise existing or evidenced arises in this appeal.

Upon the application of the prosecutors an order nisi was made on 13th May 1975, by a Justice of this Court, calling on the respondents to show cause why a writ of prohibition should not issue to restrain further proceedings in the matter before the Commissioner, proceedings in which he then proposed to make an award to settle the dispute which he had found to exist.

The ground of the order nisi was the absence of jurisdiction in the Commissioner to proceed because an industrial dispute extending interstate did not in fact exist. A particular reason put forward by the prosecutor for claiming that no such dispute existed was that there was such ambiguity and uncertainty in the terms of the demand made by the respondent Union as precluded a dispute of the requisite kind arising merely from a failure to agree to the demand. The question in this case is therefore whether the terms of the demand were such as to be capable of giving rise to a relevant dispute.