Chapter 13 - Financial legislation
Governor-General’s messages
Section 56 of the
Constitution provides:
A vote, resolution, or proposed law for
the appropriation of revenue or moneys shall not be passed unless the purpose
of the appropriation has in the same session been recommended by message of the
Governor-General to the House in which the proposal originated.
The purpose of this section is usually stated to be the preservation of
the exclusive right of the executive
government to initiate appropriations.
The reference in the section to a measure being passed is taken to
refer to passage by the House in which the measure originates. In accordance
with this interpretation, messages by the Governor-General recommending
appropriations for the purposes of particular appropriation bills are usually
reported to the House of Representatives before the bills are passed. There
have been occasions, however, of messages referring to bills being reported
after the bills have been passed by the House. Moreover, messages are usually
framed so as to refer to any appropriation required by a bill or by any
amendment to be moved by a minister, without any specification of the
appropriation authorised by the messages. The messages are, therefore, largely
a formality, but they reinforce the ministry’s control of the House of
Representatives.
As appropriation
bills must originate in the House of Representatives, the section applies in
practice only to that House, and Governor-General’s messages of this kind are
therefore not produced in the Senate. The reason for the reference in the
section to “the House in which the proposal originated” was perhaps that the
section was intended to apply in respect of bills which impose penalties or
fees, which are not appropriation bills for the purposes of section 53 and
which may therefore originate in the Senate (see J. Quick and R.R. Garran, Annotated
Constitution of the Australian Commonwealth, 1901, pp 682-3).
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