55.
6Failed referendums
125 In its written submissions, Queensland submitted that "the people of Australia have repeatedly, at referendums, rejected attempts by governments of the Commonwealth to broaden the scope of the corporations power and to confer upon the Commonwealth Parliament a general industrial relations power". Queensland further submitted that "rejection by that sovereign force [the people of Australia] of proposals to add heads of power to section 51 of the Constitution is a powerful aid in construing the Constitution". Two reasons were proffered for that contention: first, that the need for alteration was predicated upon the power which it was sought to add being absent; and secondly, that the rejection "evidences the sovereign force's view that the power sought to be added both does not and ought not to exist and should not be found in the Constitution, at least at that point in time" (original emphasis).
126 At once it should be said that the Amending Act does not depend for validity upon the federal Parliament having "a general industrial relations power". It is necessary always to bear steadily in mind that the Amending Act is directed to the relationships between constitutional corporations and their employees, not industrial relations generally. As the Explanatory Memorandum for the Amending Act says, there is an expectation (or at least the hope) that regulating the relationships between constitutional corporations and their employees will "deliver a unified national system [of workplace relations] for most employers"[1] and that the changes will "move towards a national workplace relations system for the first time"[2]. But those consequences of the Amending Act (assuming that they are consequences that will come about) do not alter the need to focus upon the ambit of the corporations power.
127 In 1910[3], 1912[4] and 1926[5], proposals were put to referendum for amendment of both par (xx) and par (xxxv) of s 51. The amendments proposed
