Two judges of the High Court have extended the idea of implied rights in the Constitution, by saying the Constitution guaranteed a right to fair trial.
However, five judges shied away from implied rights and decided on other grounds.
Earlier this year six judges ruled that the Constitution carried with it a right to freedom of political discussion. Shortly after that, one judge, Justice Toohey, gave a speech to a conference in Darwin suggesting that a whole raft of human rights could be implied in the Constitution. His reasoning was that when the people approved the Constitution they could not imagine a Parliament taking away fundamental common-law rights, thus there was no need to express them as in America. They were implied.
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