tHar. nr] THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA 853 
of the Court were in the nature of a law, it had no authority 
whatever. There was no direction of any Parliament which 
he was bound to follow, and there could be no binding quality 
in his decrees unless it were to be found in s. 5 of the Common- 
wealth of Australia Constitution Act, which declares * This 
Act and all laws made by the Parliament of the Common- 
wealth under the Constitution shall be binding on the 
Courts, Judges, and people of every state and of every part 
of the Commonwealth, notwithstanding anything in the laws 
of any state’. If this power were not held to be granted 
to the Court it would be impossible for it to perform any 
effective function. He contended at length that it was 
impossible to hold that arbitration merely meant that the 
state laws must be obeyed. The Constitution had selected 
arbitration as the mode of Commonwealth action in dealing 
with industrial disputes because arbitration was a judicial act, 
and had the advantages of being a judicial act. By requiring 
arbitration the Constitution secured that the substantial 
requirements of justice should be observed, that the parties 
must both be heard, that the Court must act honestly and 
impartially, and so forth. It was thought proper not to 
legislate directly to empower the Commonwealth to fix rates 
of wages or numbers of hours for the settlement of disputes. 
It preferred to do so by the method of arbitration in view of 
the fact that Parliament was unfitted to inquire into facts 
dependent upon evidence. The decisions of the Court must 
be regarded as an exercise of the legislative power, and it 
stood on the same footing in that regard as the determina- 
tions of the States Wages Boards, which also were legislative 
acts, but which were subject to be overridden by the para- 
mount authority of Commonwealth legislation. A judgement 
of the High Court declaring the law was binding on the people 
of the state ; if founded on state law the State Legislature 
could alter the law, but it could not reverse the judgement. 
On the other hand, a federal award prescribing industrial 
conditions was not an interpretation of the law, but intro- 
duced new obligations. This was legislation by means of 
a subordinate body acting under the Imperial authority, and