Section 51(xxxi) reads: [1] s.51 The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to: While s51(xxxi) was adapted from the US Constitution's Fifth Amendment, it has many differences.
The Commonwealth may only acquire property on just terms for a "purpose in respect of which the Parliament has power to make laws".
Several members of the court took the opportunity to consider the meaning of the term property in Minister of State for the Army v Dalziel (1944).
Justice Starke said the term includes: "every species of valuable right and interest including real and personal property, incorporeal hereditaments such as rents and services, rights-of-way, rights of profit or use in land of another, and choses in action.
Justice Dixon characterised the provisions as removing effective control over the property of the private banks.
[9] The validity of a grant in the absence of a requirement to acquire property was upheld in the later case of Pye v Renshaw.
Unlike the "just compensation" requirement in the American Fifth Amendment, however, "just terms" imports no equivalence of market value.
The legislation was suggested in 1943 by the Northern Territory's administrator Aubrey Abbott, who proposed a combination of compulsory acquisition and conversion of the land to leasehold in order to effect "the elimination of undesirable elements which Darwin has suffered from far too much in the past" and stated that he hoped to "entirely prevent the Chinese quarter forming again".
The territory's civilian population had mostly been evacuated during the war and the former Chinatown residents returned to find their homes and businesses reduced to rubble.