Commonwealth powers important: Gleeson

(AAP) - Commonwealth powers to regulate financial corporations during the global economic crisis are important, even if they are never used, former High Court chief justice Murray Gleeson says.

Mr Gleeson said those powers could modify behaviour in the corporate sector and he
cautioned those who argued the government's powers were narrow.
"At the present time, the world, including Australia, is in a financial crisis," he
said.
"Governments are invoking regulatory powers as part of a possible response. Powers
may be important even when they are not exercised.
"Their very existence may modify behaviour."
Delivering the Investigator lecture in Adelaide on Wednesday, Mr Gleeson said it was
the Australian constitution that gave the government the power to make laws in
respect to financial corporations.
As a barrister and judge, he said he had become familiar with the often argued view
that such powers were narrow in scope.
But he said that view had not prevailed.
"Recent High Court authority indicates that the commonwealth parliament has ample
power to regulate financial corporations, including power to regulate the way in
which such corporations remunerate their executives," Mr Gleeson said.
"The current debate about political responses to the financial crisis seems to take
this for granted.
"Could I suggest that November 2008 would be a very inauspicious time at which to
seek to convince the public that the regulatory power of the commonwealth over
financial corporations is narrow and confined.
"I would go further and suggest that, in the current economic circumstances, such a
view would be used as an argument against federalism itself."
In other comments, Mr Gleeson said the constitution was the most enduring part of
Australia's legal structure.
But he said its endurance depended on its ability to accommodate the legal and
institutional changes constantly going on around it.