Page:JT International SA v Commonwealth of Australia.pdf/53

Gummow J

"I take [Dalziel] to mean that s 51(xxxi) is not to be confined pedantically to the taking of title by the Commonwealth to some specific estate or interest in land recognized at law or in equity and to some specific form of property in a chattel or chose in action similarly recognized, but that it extends to innominate and anomalous interests and includes the assumption and indefinite continuance of exclusive possession and control for the purposes of the Commonwealth of any subject of property." (emphasis added)

The provisions of Divs 2 and 3 of Pt IV of the Banking Act 1947 (Cth) were held by Dixon J effectively to deprive the private banks of the substance and reality of proprietorship of their assets and undertaking and the shareholders of the substance and reality of proprietorship of their shares, and to place this beneficial enjoyment and control in the hands of agents of the Commonwealth. What distinguished this conclusion from that in Dalziel was that it was reached not directly as in Dalziel, but indirectly by reference to the circuitous devices constituted by the interconnected plan which his Honour saw laid out in Divs 2 and 3 of Pt IV of the statute. The phrase "possession and control" was used by Dixon J to identify the substance of the property of which the banks and their shareholders had been stripped in favour of the Commonwealth ; it was not used to indicate that s 51(xxxi) was engaged by a "taking" which yielded no more than some measure of control of the use of that which had been taken. Yet that is how some of the submissions by the present plaintiffs assume the remarks of Dixon J are to be understood.

It is, however, apparent that in the Tasmanian Dam Case, Deane J considered that the absence of a material benefit to the Commonwealth of a proprietary nature, at least in that case, did not avoid the conclusion that there had been an acquisition of property for the purposes of the Commonwealth. His Honour went on to support that doctrinal conclusion on two grounds.

One ground was that because "property" in s 51(xxxi) includes the "innominate and anomalous interests" to which Dixon J had referred in the Banking Case, there was no reason in principle why "a corresponding benefit under a legislative scheme cannot, in an appropriate case, be regarded as property". However, as indicated above, Dixon J used this expression with