Frances Gordon

Asset Energy has won Federal Court review of former Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s decision not to grant a two-year extension of a controversial offshore exploration license, after the government conceded that Morrison’s decision was “infected by apprehended bias.”

An anti-lockdown protester has lost her appeal of a decision dismissing her legal challenge to Victoria’s stay-at-home orders, with an appeals court finding the reduction in risk to public health “outweighed” impacts on freedom of speech.

An anti-lockdown protestor’s application to have the High Court hear a challenge to the dismissal of her lawsuit over Victoria’s stay-at-home orders has been rejected, with the justices saying the case should be heard by the state’s Court of Appeal.

An appeals court grilled counsel for the ACCC on the first day of a hearing challenging the dismissal of its case over a NSW government deal to privatise two ports, calling on the lawyer to spell out how the state was alleged to be in competition with the consortium that took over the ports.

Mining magnate Clive Palmer and two of his mining firms have lost a High Court challenge seeking to overturn a Western Australian law which prevented him from suing the state government for $30 billion over mining tenements in the Pilbara.

A judge has thrown out a protester’s lawsuit challenging Victoria’s stay-at-home orders during the state’s extended lockdown last year, saying the relevant provisions in the government’s emergency legislation were valid “in all their potential operations”.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has appealed a judge’s decision throwing out its competition case over an agreement for the privatisation of two NSW ports, calling the case “a matter of significance for the Australian economy”.

The ACCC’s claim that NSW Ports stymied competition when it signed a 50-year agreement with the state to be compensated if the Port of Newcastle built a container terminal was based on “mere speculative hopes”, a judge found in tossing the competition watchdog’s regulatory action.

The ACCC has lost its regulatory action against NSW Ports alleging a 50-year agreement with the state, signed when Port Botany and Port Kembla were privatised in 2013, was anti-competitive.

NSW Ports Operations has denied claims that an agreement for the privatisation of its subsidiaries Port Botany and Port Kembla stymied competition, describing the allegations made by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission as “slight or hypothetical”.