Federal implications under the Australian Constitution

The drawing of implications from the federal nature of the Australian Constitution has traditionally been resisted on the authority of the Engineers case. The High Court has deprecated reliance on the "federal balance" as an aid to interpretation, while endorsing the relevance of concepts such as "national concern". The article suggests that neither approach is especially useful in interpreting the Constitution, but that the federal nature of the Constitution is an important contextual consideration from which implications might be drawn in appropriate cases, including in relation to aspects of Commonwealth legislative and executive power and the operation of s 96 of the Constitution.