From Parker to the Australia Acts: Sir Victor Windeyer and the Short-Lived Triumph of the Independent Britons

In 1986, the last vestiges of Australia's imperial common law past was eradicated by the passage through the Commonwealth, State and Westminster Parliaments of the Australia Acts.¹ Eminent judges noted the sense of liberation that this legislation provided.² On its face, however, this sense of throwing off the imperial yoke is difficult to understand. Whatever the formal limitations that were removed by the Australia Acts, Australian courts had, since the end of the Second World War, been increasingly free to mould the common law to meet distinctly Australian conditions.³ In this sense, there is more continuity with the past than those who see 1986 as a liberation acknowledge.