Kathrine Galloway

Landowners' vs Miners' Property Interests: The Unsustainability of Property as Dominion

This article highlights the inadequacies of considering interests in land (property) in terms of individualistic private interests, in light of the ecological issues facing society at large. It does so using the CSG debate as an example of the limitations inherent in our system of private land holding. It first provides a background to Australian law’s understanding of the nature of private property and its attendant rights, then examines how this framework is unable to accommodate deeper community concerns such as food security and ecological sustainability. Finally, it assesses whether the issue to be addressed in the CSG debate is one of competing private property interests, or rather one of re-thinking the very nature of private property to reflect a more sustainable ecological framework.

Big Data: A case study of disruption and government power:

Although it is part of core government business to collect information about its citizens, ‘big data’ has increased the scale, speed and complexity of data collection and use to such an extent that it is arguably qualitatively different from the record-keeping that has gone before it. Big data represents a radical shift in the balance of power between State and citizen. This article argues that embedding big data in government operations masks its deployment as enhancing government power, rather than simply facilitating execution of government activities. In other words, big data is ‘disruptive’ technology that calls for the examination of the limits of government power. To illustrate this argument, this article examines a selection of recent case studies of attempts by the Australian government to deploy big data as a tool of governance. It identifies the risk to the citizen inherent in the use of big data, to justify review of the bounds of government power in the face of rapid technological change.

One tale of property, in my own words

ABSTRACT The power of the State to alter the conditions of land use through planning laws continues to attract theorisation at the possible intersection between planning and property. As planning laws become more complex, and by needs responsive to environmental degradation - including the consequences of climate change - landowners will arguably suffer loss of market value of their land despite broader community benefit. This article analyses the contention that land planning regulation is itself property - a claim made by Paul Babie in this journal in 2016. It does so in four parts, focusing on the law’s own construction of both real property and planning permissions. It analyses the nature, content and source of the estate in fee simple in Queensland, followed by analysis of Penner’s ‘bundle of rights’ argument to ascertain whether planning laws might be comprehended within this conception of property. It goes on to assess planning permissions in terms of Honore’s incidents of property before establishing the nature, content and source of planning rights. Finally, it clarifies how planning law responds to climate change, suggesting that downstream liabilities rather than front-line environmental protection is at stake. In conclusion, it posits a conceptualisation of property alternative to that of Babie.

Re-evaluating Legal Citation in a Digital Landscape

Increasing access to digital works and the proliferation of digital genres has changed the way in which we conceive of information, and particularly legal information, including how it is represented within legal citation practice. This article, written by Melissa Castan and Kate Galloway, contributes to the discourse around legal citation in two ways. It first provides a theoretical justification for citation practice as an element of legal information management crucial to effective scholarship, including knowledge creation and dissemination. Secondly, and based on this theoretical foundation, it identifies the challenges facing existing legal citation practice in the face of new media, new representations of legal scholarship, and new objectives for citation practice. Finally, in this article we distil foundation principles for citation to integrate these diverse elements. To illustrate the application of these principles, the article closes with suggested citation practices designed to enhance the existing framework in this digital landscape.