As the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee is celebrated over the next month, much will be written about how she has ‘never put a foot wrong’. But how do we know? What do we really know about how the Queen exercises her constitutional power? The answer is – astonishingly little.

In this blog, Ellen Joy, one of the CRU’s interns, discusses the significance of the use of the term ‘peoples’ in the constitutional amendment proposed by the Expert Panel on Indigenous Constitutional Recognition:
What difference does a letter ‘s’ make?

The Australian Electoral Commission today released its analysis of the Fair Work Australia report into Mr Thomson. The AEC’s analysis (which can be found here: http://www.aec.gov.au/Parties_and_Representatives/compliance/files/hsu-report.pdf)
discloses two significant issues with respect to the operation of the disclosure laws under the Commonwealth Electoral Act.
First, the ‘donations’ that allegedly funded the employment of staff to raise Mr Thomson’s profile in the electorate of Dobell did not require disclosure because they occurred before the date he was pre-selected as a candidate for the seat in 2007.

Jess Natoli, one of the CRU’s student interns, has been researching the application of ‘special measures’ in the context of the proposals of the Expert Panel on the Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australians. Here is her blog discussing the issues:
The Expert Panel has recommended inserting an anti-racial discrimination provision into the federal constitution.

Could the Federal Parliament expel or suspend Craig Thomson or Peter Slipper?
The House of Representatives could suspend either of them – but not expel them. This is because s 49 of the Constitution gives to the Parliament the power to legislate about the powers of its Houses, but until it does so, the Houses of the Federal Parliament have the same powers as the House of Commons had at the time of federation. These powers include the power to expel and the power to suspend.