Private Law Theory

INTRODUCTION
Before 1992, representative proceedings, in which a party conducts the claims of many individuals against a defendant, were brought pursuant to court rules modelled on Chancery Court procedures. But courts interpreted these rules as only enabling representative proceedings in a narrow set of circumstances, and they ‘fell into disuse’. The introduction of Part IVA into the Federal Court of Australia Act 1976 (Cth) (‘FCA Act’) in 1992, and similar regimes subsequently introduced in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, and Tasmania, resulted in a more significant role for representative proceedings, or ‘class actions’, in Australia. Part IVA is designed to enable persons who have suffered from mass harms to ‘obtain redress and do so more cheaply and efficiently’ than they otherwise could. Although the enforcement of employment laws did not appear to motivate the Parliament to introduce Part IVA, around 10% of class actions since 1992 have been employment law disputes …

Liam Meagher, Employment Class Actions: Past Use and Present Utility [2022] UNSW Law Journal Forum (4) 1.