The Royal Commission and the Australian Constitution

This paper reviews some recommendations from the 2020 Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements (the Royal Commission). The Royal Commission delivered a nearly 600-page report that contained 80 recommendations. This paper does not review each of those recommendations but focuses on the constitutional and legislative considerations as they relate to recommendations about the proposed role of the Commonwealth in coordinating interstate resource sharing, the power of the Australian Government to declare a national state of emergency and the enhanced used of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) in disaster response.