I thought this extract from a High Court of Australia ruling was well worth preserving. Read and contemplate, dear reader.

Courts, including this Court, regularly speak in terms of the 'intention' of the legislature when interpreting particular legislation. This polite but unacceptable fiction has never been shown in starker relief than in the present case. So complex is the interlocking legislation, with fiction piled upon fiction, that it must be doubted whether any of those presenting and enacting it were truly aware of precisely what they were doing. It may be hoped that this and other recent decisions, together with the great national importance of the subject matter of the legislation, will encourage its early reconsideration and the adoption of a simpler constitutional foundation to reduce the perils that are otherwise bound to recur, possibly with serious results.

— The Queen v Hughes [2000] HCA 22 (3 May 2000), ¶60.