27.
were laws with respect to that subject-matter. The Commonwealth further submitted that other impugned provisions were to be supported in one or more of the ways identified as providing a sufficient connection between a law and s 51(xx).
3A distinction between "external" and "internal" relationships
64 The first of the three principal submissions made by the plaintiffs about s 51(xx) (seeking to distinguish between "external" relationships and "other" or "internal" relationships) was put in a number of different ways. The plaintiffs, rightly, recognised the difficulties and dangers in attempting to state comprehensively the scope of the power. Nonetheless, they submitted that the "essential scope and focus of the corporations power" could be gathered from the Convention Debates, the early text writers, what has been said in the cases, including, in particular, New South Wales v The Commonwealth (The Incorporation Case)[1], and general principles of constitutional construction. It was said that the mischief to which the power was addressed was:
"a concern about enabling proper regulation of artificial corporate entities of particular types, especially insofar as they operated in jurisdictions other than the ones in which they have been created, along with a concern about the need to regulate their interaction with the public in the conduct of their business activities, particularly in light of the economic strength and usual limited liability characteristic of such bodies corporate." (emphasis added)
These relevant ideas, it was said, could be encapsulated in different ways, but to much the same effect, and the plaintiffs pointed to a number of statements made in the cases which it was said did that. They submitted:
"Following Isaacs J it can be said that the power is directed to regulating 'the conduct of the corporations in their transactions with or as affecting the public', that is, 'the conduct of the corporations in relation to outside persons'.[2] Alternatively, it may be said that the power is directed to authorise the regulation of matters peculiar to constitutional corporations,
