THE INTER-STATE COMMISSION*

Abstract: The Inter-State Commission (ISC), although required by Australia's Constitution, has been in existence from 1913 to 1920 only. In 1975 the Labor government introduced a bill to set up the Commission. The bill was passed in a heavily amended form, but the legislation was not proclaimed by the incoming coalition government. A brief history of the "first" ISC raises the question of whether the High Court would ever have accepted the regulatory powers that the Labor government wished to invest in the late Commission. The ISC envisaged by the Labor government's bill would have had strong powers of regulation, arbitration and investigation over interstate and overseas transport. The Senate left it with weakened investigative powers only. Our Federal system encourages many government practices which are not in the interests of the community as a whole. However, while the ISC's role in curbing these practices would have been beneficial, the States have shown themselves too powerful politically to accept such policing, even if the High Court had allowed the ISC to do so. The ISC as conceived by Labor's bill would not have been politically viable, but the ISC as provided for in the Act would be worth setting up, as it would have several advantages over existing investigative mechanisms. It would have more experience and competence than ad hoc inquiries, and its continued existence would make it difficult to shelve its reports. Its statutory basis, broader terms of reference and its ability to force organizations to divulge information would all serve to make it a better investigative body than the Bureau of Transport Economics.     

Dualism and the limits of European integration

I should like to express my gratitude to members of the Faculty of Law at the University of Bergen, to whom I presented an earlier version of this paper. I should also like to thank Clare McGlynn for her helpful observations on an earlier draft.     

IQ and delinquency: A test of two competing explanations

In the past, sociologists either dismissed or ignored the well-established empirical relationship between IQ and juvenile delinquency. More recently, however, they have come to accept the IQ/JD connection but now debate the most valid explanation for it. Some have advanced what we characterized as a school performance model, while others adhere to what may be called a school reaction model. The major bone of contention between the competing models is over the school variables thought to mediate the IQ/JD relationship. In this study, we specified the most dominant versions of the competing models as well as a model integrating the concepts of each. Using three waves of data from the Youth in Transition project, we first estimated parameters for each of the competing models and then parameters for the integrated model. Considered independently, each model was supported by the data. However, when each of the separate models was forced to take into account the explanatory contribution of its competitor, only the school performance model was supported. Implications of the findings for schooling and delinquency are discussed.