At the later conventions, in Adelaide in 1897, in Sydney later the same year and in Melbourne in early 1898, there were changes to the earlier draft. In Adelaide, the name of the court was changed from Supreme Court of Australia to High Court of Australia. Many people also opposed the new court completely replacing the Privy Council: many large businesses, particularly those which were subsidiaries of British companies or regularly traded with the United Kingdom, preferred for business reasons to keep the colonies under the unified jurisdiction of the British courts, and petitioned the conventions to that effect.[11] Other arguments posited against removing Privy Council appeals were that Australian judges were of a poorer quality than English ones, and that without the Council's oversight, the law in the colonies risked becoming different from English law.[38] Some politicians, such as Sir George Dibbs, supported the petitioners, but others, including Alfred Deakin, supported the design of the court as it was.[11] Inglis Clark took the view that the possibility of divergence was a good thing, for the law could adapt appropriately to Australian circumstances.[38] Despite the debate, the portions of the draft dealing with the court remained largely unchanged, as the delegates focused on different matters.
