## Facts

- A trade union representing engineers asserted an interstate industrial dispute against 844 employers, including several Western Australian State-owned trading enterprises.
- The union sought a federal industrial award through the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration that would bind all named employers, including the State enterprises.
- The matter reached the High Court of Australia by case stated to resolve whether the Commonwealth’s conciliation-and-arbitration power could apply to State government employers.
- The Western Australian entities were established and operated as organs of the State while engaging in trading activities comparable to private employers.
- An industrial dispute existed in fact between the union and the Western Australian State trading concerns; the dispute’s constitutional status depended on whether State employers were within the federal power.

## Issues

1. Whether the Commonwealth Parliament may enact laws under the conciliation-and-arbitration power for interstate industrial disputes that bind States as employers.
2. Whether the dispute involving Western Australian State trading concerns qualified as an “industrial dispute” within the relevant constitutional power.
3. Whether prior doctrines limiting federal power—reserved State powers and broad implied intergovernmental immunities—should constrain the scope of the federal head of power.

## Decision

- The High Court answered both stated questions “Yes” by a 5–1 vote.
- The majority held that the federal conciliation-and-arbitration power extends to interstate industrial disputes involving State trading enterprises as employers.
- The majority rejected and overruled the reserved State powers doctrine and broad implied intergovernmental immunities as interpretive constraints on express federal powers.
- The Court confirmed the federal industrial tribunal’s authority to make an award binding the Western Australian State trading concerns.
- A lone dissent would have preserved stronger State immunity from federal industrial regulation.

## Legal Principles

- Constitutional interpretation begins with the ordinary meaning of the constitutional text read in context; implications cannot be used to narrow an express grant of federal legislative power to protect State interests.
- No general presumption limits Commonwealth powers to preserve a reserved domain of State authority; any limits must be found in the constitutional text or necessary structural implication.
- States and State instrumentalities are not broadly immune from valid federal laws merely because they are governmental; immunity requires a specific constitutional basis.
- A general federal power over interstate industrial disputes may apply to State-owned trading enterprises when they act as employers in an interstate dispute.
- Convention history or framers’ expectations cannot displace clear constitutional language.

## Conclusion

The High Court held that federal power over interstate industrial disputes can bind State trading enterprises and, in doing so, replaced earlier State-protective interpretive doctrines with a text-centered approach that expanded the practical reach of Commonwealth legislative power.


Amalgamated Soc'y of Eng'rs v. Adelaide S.S. Co. Ltd. (Austl. H.C.) (1920)