Law of Australia

Capstone

Capstone: Mia Tran and the honey farm

Mia Tran is an invented beekeeper who runs a small honey business in Victoria, with a farm shop and an online store that sells across Australia. In one year several things happen. The **Commonwealth** passes a law that sets labelling standards for honey, based on an international treaty on food labelling to which Australia is a party, and **Victoria** has its own, different, label rule. Mia joins a protest on a public road near a logging site that threatens her bees’ forage, and she is charged under a state Act that bans protests within 150 metres of a forestry operation without police permission. She buys a block of farmland to expand her hives, registers the transfer and later learns that the seller had signed an earlier contract to sell the same block to another buyer, Jun, who never lodged a caveat. She dismisses a worker, Sam, who had been with her for eight months in a business with fewer than fifteen employees, a week after Sam asked about unpaid overtime. And a customer says that her jar labelled ‘raw and organic’ was neither. You are asked to advise. Use the questions you have learned: which source of power, which right or rule, which court or tribunal, and which remedy. All the people are invented and the facts are simplified, so state your assumptions.

General education on Australian law, using invented people and businesses. It states constitutional provisions, statutes and landmark decisions in simplified form, and it is not legal advice. The states and territories differ, the law changes, and every case turns on its facts. Consult a lawyer admitted in the jurisdiction that matters.