Commonwealth solicitor-general R R Garran recalled in his Prosper the Commonwealth that the Regulations

Were mostly expressed widely to make sure that nothing necessary was omitted, and the result soon was that John Citizen was hardly able to lift a finger without coming under the penumbra of some technical offence.

War Precautions Repeal Act of 1920 kept most of its provisions. In 1929, its provisions were used to convict the secretary of the Melbourne Trades Hall Council of encouraging ‘something in the nature of a strike’.

Crimes Act amendments:

The most important provision was sec. 17, which introduced Part IIA into the principal Act. Sections 30A to 30H of that Part declare revolutionary and seditious associations to be unlawful, with incidental provisions as to giving or soliciting contributions for unlawful associations, publications, forfeiture of property and proof of membership. (Geoffrey Sawer, Australian Federal Politics and the Law, 1901-1929)

The changes were aimed at the Communist leadership of the Seamen’s Union . They were driven by Attorney-General John Latham, Chief Justice during the 1951 case to ban the Party, and the only judge to accept the validity of the Act.

Amendments to Crimes Act

empowered the Attorney-General to obtain a declaration of the High Court that a body of persons incorporated or unincorporated constituted an unlawful association under the existing provisions of the Act because it advocated sedition or violent revolution; incidental provisions facilitated proof and in particular enabled the Attorney-General to compel persons and organisations to answer questions and disclose documents in order to prepare his case; executive members of the associations at the date of a declaration were deprived of the right to vote in federal elections for seven years, and members not born in Australia made liable to deportation by order of the Attorney-General. (Geoffrey Sawer, Australian Federal Politics and the Law, 1929-1949)

The Act extended ‘sedition’ to cover ‘promoting feelings of hostility between different classes of His Majesty’s subject so as to endanger the peace, order of good government of the Commonwealth’.

Menzies introduces Bill which defined a Communist as

a person who supports or advocates the objectives, policies, teachings, principles or practices of communism, as expounded by Marx and Lenin.

Minister for Labour, Harold Holt, explains to a correspondent:

Our bill to outlaw Communism was only part of our programme of legislation in this fight. While making a frontal attack in that way, we also provided legislation to attack the Communists on both flanks. They can now be challenged from within their union citadels by means of officially conducted secret ballots.

Labor leader Chifley says of the Bill:

It opens the door for the liar, the perjurer and the pimp to make charges n damn men’s reputations and to do so in secret without having either to substantiate or prove any charges they might make.

Waterside Workers’ Federation
Australian Coal and Shale Employees’ Federation
Australian Railways Union
Building Workers’ Industrial Union
Amalgamated Engineering Union
Seamen’s Union of Australia
Federated Ironworkers’ Association of Australia
Sheet Metal Workers’ Union
Federated Clerks’ Union of Australia
Federated Ship Painters and Dockers’ Union

The decision was not about civil liberties, which have almost no place in the Constitution. The majority rejected the Act because its provisions denied the High Court’s role as the arbiter between Commonwealth and State powers. The next Chief Justice, Owen Dixon, saw certain provisions as an attack on the Federal principle.