Abstract
Australia is a federation in which law-making powers are shared by the Federal Parliament and the States. Australia is also a common law country, and so its law is a mix of common (judge-made) and statute law. Some areas of law are almost exclusively the province of the Commonwealth,1 while others are the province of the States.2 Law-making powers related to health and medicine, which necessarily cover a diversity of subject matters, are possessed variously by the Commonwealth and the States and Territories.3 There are nine Australian jurisdictions: South Australia, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, Queensland, the Northern Territory, Western Australia and Tasmania as well as the Federal jurisdiction. Australian laws that safeguard the human rights of patients and research subjects therefore often differ from State to State, sometimes to a considerable degree. This necessarily complicates the task of expounding the rights of patients and research subjects. Further impeding the task of exposition is the fact that biomedical research in Australia is mainly regulated by national guidelines, rather than by national legislation, except where State Governments have seen fit to pass laws on particular types of research, as in the case of research on human embryos (discussed below). Again, this makes for a patchwork of laws and guidelines, with patients and research subjects possessed of variable rights, depending on their location within Australia.
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© 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Naffine, N. (2002). AUS — Country Report Australia. In: Taupitz, J. (eds) Das Menschenrechtsübereinkommen zur Biomedizin des Europarates — taugliches Vorbild für eine weltweit geltende Regelung? / The Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine of the Council of Europe — a Suitable Model for World-Wide Regulation?. Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Deutsches, Europäisches und Internationales Medizinrecht, Gesundheitsrecht und Bioethik der Universitäten Heidelberg und Mannheim, vol 7. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-59424-3_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-59424-3_14
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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