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Chapter 13 - Financial legislation
When requests are required: (c) proposed charge or burden
Section 53 of the Constitution
provides in the third paragraph that the Senate may not amend any proposed law
so as to increase any proposed charge or burden on the people. Any amendment to
a bill which would have this effect must be moved in the Senate by way of a
request to the House of Representatives for an amendment. This expression is
used only in section 53, and its interpretation is therefore a matter for the
two Houses in their dealings with each other.
The interpretation of this provision has been the subject of much
discussion in the Senate in the past, and, in particular, was the subject of an
extensive debate in the Senate in 1903 in relation to the Sugar Bounty Bill.
The Senate may not initiate bills imposing taxation or appropriating
money. The Senate may not amend bills imposing taxation or appropriating money
for the ordinary annual services. In the absence of the latter prescription,
the Senate would be able to initiate by way of amendment that which it may not
initiate by way of its own bill. By the Senate
making requests to the
House of Representatives for amendments to such bills, the initiative of the
House in proposing the imposition of taxation and the appropriation of money is
preserved. The further prescription in the third paragraph of section 53
similarly ensures, in relation to appropriation bills which the Senate may
otherwise amend, that is, bills appropriating money other than for the ordinary
annual services, that the Senate does not initiate by way of amendment that
which it cannot initiate by way of its own bill, namely, a further appropriation
of money.
The paragraph should therefore be regarded as applying only to that
category of bills which the Senate may not initiate but which it may amend,
that is, bills appropriating money other than for the ordinary annual services.
To seek to apply the paragraph to any other category of bills immediately makes
nonsense of it and defeats its purpose. If the paragraph is interpreted as
prescribing against the Senate amending a bill which it may initiate, this
means either that the Senate may not amend a bill which it has introduced, an
obvious nonsense, or that the Senate may not amend a bill for the reason only
that the bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives rather than
the Senate, which is also a nonsense. It makes no sense to seek to prevent the
Senate doing by way of amendment that which the Senate may do by initiating or
amending its own bill; the Senate could circumvent such a prescription by
refraining from consideration of a bill sent to it by the House, and sending to
the House its own bill with a message indicating that its consent to the
original bill is dependent upon the House’s consent to the Senate bill. Not
only would the supposed prescription thereby be avoided, but the implied
extension of the exclusive right of the House to initiate the prescribed kinds
of proposals would be undermined.
Therefore the paragraph applies only to bills which the Senate may not
initiate but may amend, that is, appropriation bills other than those for the
ordinary annual services of the government.
If this interpretation is not adopted, it is not possible to find any
coherent purpose of the paragraph; any other interpretation immediately entails
a view that the paragraph has no coherent purpose.
This was the interpretation of the third paragraph adopted at the later
constitutional conventions, and in the early parliamentary discussion of the
paragraph.
At the conventions,
it was pointed out that the difference between an
amendment and a request would be a matter of procedural form only and not a
matter of substantive power, and this was given as a reason for opposing
section 53 in the form to which agreement was eventually given. (Speech by
George Reid, Melbourne Session, 1898, pp 1997-8.) The same view was repeatedly
expressed in the first and only comprehensive debate in the Senate on the
interpretation of the paragraph. (On the Sugar
Bounty Bill 1903, SD, 2, 8, 22 and 23/7/1903, pp 1691-1703, 1821-63,
2365-415, 2469-503. Speeches by Senators Higgs, MacGregor, Clemons, Millen,
Symon and Pulsford, pp 1836, 1843, 1852, 1854, 2404, 2384, 2482.) This
observation has repeatedly been made since that time, including by the Leader
of the Government in the Senate. (Senator Gareth Evans, SD, 1/9/1993,
p. 740.) As will be seen, it was a major factor in the subsequent somewhat
careless application of the paragraph.
The claim that there is no substantive difference between amendments
and requests, and that it is a matter merely of procedural form, has never been
refuted except in terms of the foregoing interpretation of the third paragraph,
that it is designed to preserve the initiative of the House in respect of
imposition of taxation and appropriations.
When challenged
with the assertion that there would be no difference between amendments and
requests, Edmund Barton, the leader of the convention, explained the provision in terms of
preserving the initiative of the
House of Representatives. An amendment, he
said, would allow the Senate to put back on the House of Representatives the
responsibility for determining whether the measure would pass, whereas a
request would ensure that the Senate could not avoid that responsibility. The
bill would remain as the House of Representatives had initiated it, and if the
House declined to change it at the request of the Senate, the Senate would have
to decide whether to agree to the House’s bill. (Adelaide Session, 1897, p.
557.)
The exposition of the third paragraph by Quick and Garran clearly
states that it applies only to those bills which the Senate may not initiate
but may otherwise amend, that is bills appropriating money other than for the
ordinary annual services, and is designed to preserve the House’s originating
prerogative:
The second paragraph of sec. 53 takes
from the Senate absolutely the power to amend tax bills and annual
appropriation bills, whilst the third paragraph restricts its power to amend
other appropriation bills. [emphasis added]
Seeing that the Senate cannot amend a
bill imposing taxation, it may be naturally asked — how can the Senate
possibly amend a proposed law so as to increase any proposed charge or burden
on the people? The answer is that the Senate is only forbidden to amend tax
bills and the annual appropriation bill; it may amend two kinds of expenditure
bills, viz.: those for permanent and extraordinary appropriations. ..... The
Senate may amend such money bills so as to reduce the total amount of
expenditure or to change the method, object, and destination of the
expenditure, but not to increase the total expenditure originated in the House
of Representatives. (Annotated Constitution of the Australian Commonwealth,
1901, pp 668, 671.)
Garran apparently subsequently changed his mind in that regard (in an
opinion of 13 April 1950, presented to the Senate on 22 March 1994), but his later
view creates many difficulties.
The first and only comprehensive debate on the interpretation of the
paragraph in the Senate was occasioned by an assertion by the House of
Representatives that a Senate amendment to a bill should have been a request
because it fell within the terms of the paragraph, in that it would increase
expenditure under an appropriation in the bill. The message from the House
supported this assertion on the ground that the amendment was said to be “an
infraction of the provisions of section 53 of the Constitution, which prohibits
the Senate from originating a proposed law appropriating revenue or moneys”, as
well as the ground of infringement of the third paragraph itself; that is, the
third paragraph was seen as supporting the provisions concerning origination.
(SD, 1903, p. 2365.) The minister leading for the government in the debate
similarly supported the contention that a request was necessary on the basis
that an amendment violated the right of the House to originate appropriations (Senator
O’Connor, pp 2367, 2369). This theme was emphasised by others during the
debate (exchange between Senators Keating and Clemons pp 1854-5; Senator MacGregor p. 1845, Senator Millen pp 2405, 2409).
The minister was similarly insistent that a bill must propose an appropriation
in order to fall within the prescription of the third paragraph:
Of course, if the bill does not make an
appropriation, we can do anything we like with it. (Senator O’Connor, pp 2369,
2406, 2489.)
It was clear then, from this early discussion, that the third paragraph
was taken only to prevent the Senate doing by way of amendment that which it
could not do by way of initiating a bill, to apply only to appropriation bills
which the Senate could otherwise amend, and to prevent only an amendment which
would increase expenditure under the appropriation.
This was a rational and coherent interpretation of the paragraph, and
an answer, the only coherent answer, to the repeatedly-made observation that
there is no difference, other than of procedural form, between an amendment and
a request.
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