From at least 1904 through to the last decade of the 20th century, the constitutional basis of most Australian federal industrial relations legislation was the conciliation and arbitration power.

In general, the Federal Parliament would exercise this power to establish an independent tribunal to set minimum terms and conditions of employment by the compulsory conciliation and arbitration of interstate industrial disputes.

Another important historical fact of note is that for much of the 20th century, the States and Territories had their own workplace relations legislation setting terms and conditions for employees not affected by the arbitration of interstate industrial disputes.

In a legal sense, perhaps the two most fundamental changes were (1) the purported elimination of State and Territory workplace relations legislation from the federal industrial landscape and (2) the attempt to rely almost completely on the corporations power directly to prescribe minimum terms and conditions of employment regardless of the existence of an intrastate industrial dispute.

This unprecedented (but not novel) use of the corporations power to enact federal industrial legislation was accompanied by claims that 85% of the Australian workforce would be covered by WorkChoices.

The outcome of the challenge was the High Court decision of New South Wales & Ors v Commonwealth, delivered on 14 November 2006.

[1] The majority of the High Court : Their Honours also rejected other arguments of the plaintiffs that parts of the WorkChoices legislation The majority declared:[5] A law which prescribes norms regulating the relationship between constitutional corporations and their employees, or affecting constitutional corporations in the manner considered and upheld in Fontana Films[6] or, as Gaudron J said in Re Pacific Coal, "laws prescribing the industrial rights and obligations of [constitutional] corporations and their employees and the means by which they are to conduct their industrial relations"[7] are laws with respect to constitutional corporations.The significant ideas put forward by Kirby J include: Callinan J summarises his judgment at paragraph 913.

The Workplace Relations WorkChoices Act is itself politically contentious and perceived by some as an attack on both the Union and Labor movements, and the minimum wage setting system as a whole.

The Coalition (inspired by conservative think tank the H. R. Nicholls Society) believe the step to have "bravely taken advantage of...new found legislative freedom and have created a substantially different and national industrial relations system".

In this context the creation of "one national system" is seen by some as a sensible step to modernise Australia's industrial relations regime.

Others see it as a coup d'état of the Labor Party's power to create union friendly legislative regimes through their respective State Parliaments.

The Case is also significant in that it had the most lawyers to ever appear in the High Court at one time (39), outstripping Wik Peoples v Queensland for the title.