Goodman v Stafford (1992) 15 MVR 145. It will be necessary to return to Goodman in due course.
184 The Commissioner submitted that the failure of the infringement notice to identify the place of the contraventions did not result in the invalidity of the notice. The Commissioner relied upon Project Blue Sky Inc v Australian Broadcasting Authority [1998] HCA 28; 194 CLR 355 (Project Blue Sky) at [91], where in a joint judgment McHugh, Gummow, Kirby and Hayne JJ said –
An act done in breach of a condition regulating the exercise of a statutory power is not necessarily invalid and of no effect. Whether it is depends upon whether there can be discerned a legislative purpose to invalidate any act that fails to comply with the condition. The existence of the purpose is ascertained by reference to the language of the statute, its subject matter and objects, and the consequences for the parties of holding void every act done in breach of the condition.
185 The Commissioner submitted that the infringement notice identified the relevant contraventions with sufficient specificity to satisfy the purpose of the requirements in s 104(1)(e)(iii), which I understood the Commissioner to submit was giving fair notice of alleged contraventions to persons receiving infringement notices. The Commissioner submitted that there was no ambiguity as to which contraventions were the subject of the notice, and so X Corp suffered no prejudice by any omission of the place of the contraventions. Senior counsel for the Commissioner accepted that a failure to comply with s 104(1)(e)(iii) would result in invalidity if the particular failure "could well lead to prejudice" to the recipient of the infringement notice.
186 I accept the Commissioner's submission that the consequences of non-compliance with s 104(1)(e)(iii) must be discerned as the result of a process of statutory construction.
187 In Project Blue Sky at [91], McHugh, Gummow, Kirby and Hayne JJ described the relevant question as turning on "whether there can be discerned a legislative purpose to invalidate any act that fails to comply with the condition" (emphasis added). Amongst other things, this purpose fell to be discerned by reference to "the consequences for the parties of holding void every act done in breach of the condition" (emphasis added). It could be thought that these formulations suppose that failure to comply with a statutory condition on the exercise of a power either invalidates "every act done in breach of the condition" or none.
188 But, because of the path of reasoning adopted by the majority in Project Blue Sky, it was not necessary in that case to consider whether some statutory schemes might have the result that
