ABSTRACT
An injunction to restrain criminal acts generally relates to a statutory offence and it is injunctions to prevent a statutory offence which are relevant in the context of restraining an imminent breach of the official secrets legislation. In the statutory offence cases the application for an injunction is usually brought by the Attorney-General on behalf of individuals or on behalf of a public authority, or by a public authority acting on its own behalf if the statute so allows, to enforce a public right. This chapter focuses on the issue of injunctions to restrain the commission of a criminal offence in United Kingdom (UK) and Australia. The relevance of this discussion to the suppression of official secrets relating to national security becomes obvious in the analysis of the UK government's treatment of the Spycatcher disclosures in the late 1980s.
