I’d also suggest looking at the jurisdiction of NCAT then. I doubt it has the ability to determine the matter and/or give the relief you’re seeking,
And let’s be clear. There are two types of people who post answers here:
- lay people who, while knowledgeable, are in no different position to yourself; and
- practising lawyers.
Both parties are doing so voluntarily. None of them gets paid out of this.
Your question, while specific, concerned an area of technicality which is accepted as given by the majority of people in Australia (which I base on the lack of challenge, so take it with a grain of salt). You’re upset at having to go off and research this obscure area. The people who answer here are answering for their own knowledge and experience. Expecting them to go off and research down a rabbit hole, especially one which is 99.9% practically useless to them and unlikely to add any value to their professional lives (in the lawyers’ case), for free, is unreasonable. Getting huffy about it is adding insult to injury. Not that I think any of them particularly care.
The simple answer for you, from a macro perspective, is that even if you are technically correct (which I doubt) the a decision in your favour is going to potentially invalidate an umpteen number of legislative instruments across all portfolios. No court in Australia is going to do that because it squarely goes against the public interest and would cause more harm than good. If your argument was that good, and that effective, it would have been dealt with well before now.
At absolute best, and the chances of this are so low as to be almost unworthy of raising, you may force the government to simply re-issue the direction with the Minister’s full legal name (and almost undoubtedly they would do so while making it retrospectively applicable so that anything done in reasonable reliance of the ‘defective‘ direction is not invalidated and anyone who contravened it doesn’t get a pass).
