Chapter 13 - Financial legislation
Decision as to amendments or requests
The Chair of
Committees may decide in the first instance whether an amendment should take
the form of a request (ruling of President Baker, SD, 3/10/1906, pp 5966-8), but
ultimately it is for the Senate to decide whether to proceed by way of
amendment or request.
In June 2000 the Senate adopted a resolution requiring all amendments
circulated in the Senate chamber in the form of requests to be accompanied by a
statement of reasons for the amendments being framed as requests together with
a statement by the Clerk on whether the amendments would be regarded as
requests under the precedents of the Senate (26/6/2000, J.2899). This
resolution followed a series of cases of government drafters presenting
amendments as requests inappropriately and failing to respond to requests for
explanations for so doing.
For the assistance of senators, the Senate Department classifies and
marks bills as follows:
A — contains a
provision appropriating money
AA — amends
an act which contains a standing appropriation of money*
T — affects
taxation but does not appear to impose a new tax or to increase an existing
tax*
IT — appears
to impose a new tax or to increase an existing tax*
N — does
not attract any of these classifications*
* if more than one act is amended by
the bill, the amendments to the acts are classified in accordance with these
marks.
For cases of bills stated by government not to be bills imposing
taxation, but treated by the Senate as bills imposing taxation, see above,
under When requests are required: (a) bills imposing taxation.
Until late 1994 it
was the practice of the Office of Parliamentary Counsel (the government
drafters) to place marks on the bottom right hand corner of the first page of
bills to indicate a view of their category. The marks were as follows:
MM — indicating a bill requiring a
message from the Governor‑General recommending an appropriation of loan
moneys
MR — indicating a bill requiring a
message from the Governor‑General recommending an appropriation of
revenue
MRM — indicating a bill requiring a
message from the Governor‑General recommending an appropriation of
revenue and loan moneys
T — indicating a bill dealing
with taxation, but not imposing tax
T* — indicating a bill imposing
taxation
O — none of the above.
Where a bill required a message from the Governor‑General
recommending an appropriation and was also a bill with respect to taxation, the
mark placed on the first page was a mark composed of the marks relevant to each
aspect of the bill.
These classifications were not necessarily accepted by the Senate.
Bills marked T* were not always regarded as imposing taxation, as often they
merely amended statutes which imposed taxation without affecting the tax. Bills
which clearly proposed fees for services were often marked T* (Overseas
Students Charge Bill 1985, 29/11/1985, J.661).
During the controversy over the 1993 taxation bills (see above), it was
pointed out that the drafters’ classification of taxation bills often did not
conform with the views then expounded by the Attorney-General’s Department. In
late 1994 the Office of Parliamentary Counsel abandoned the practice of placing
marks on bills.
Cases of
government amendments wrongly circulated as requests have been considered above
in relation to the various categories of bills. Usually this arises because of
inconsistent interpretations by government advisers of the constitutional
provisions. Occasionally, however, even after the resolution of the Senate of 26 June 2000, government amendments which should be requests are
mistakenly circulated as amendments (Taxation Laws Amendment (Research and
Development) Bill 2000, SD, 27/9/2001, p. 28271).
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