I should like to ask the Parliamentary Secretary about the amendment to the 1952 Act. Section 2 (2) refers to employment as a minister where the person gets a salary or stipend and is a member of a class in respect of which the Minister is satisfied that an appropriate church body has made representation to him. Therefore the church involved must make representation to the Minister to have its people included. Is this the same representation here or is this just to certify that the man is a minister of that particular church?
Social Welfare (No. 3) Bill, 1974: Committee and Final Stages.
Section I agreed to.
SECTION 2.
Question proposed: "That section 2 stand part of the Bill."
It is to certify that he is a member of that particular church.
The Minister will then get evidence from the appropriate church body?
Yes.
To expand on the problem raised by the definition in respect of nuns, presumably Christian Brothers are not ministers of religion either?
No. They are not ordained.
From what the Parliamentary Secretary said, do I take it that, if an application was made by any class of person in this area, this legislation would empower him to include nuns; or would it require further legislation?
It would require additional legislation.
Question put and agreed to.
SECTION 3.
Question proposed: "That section 3 stand part of the Bill."
I should like to say something about the form of section 3. This section has five subsections. As far as I am concerned, each is of almost equal incomprehensibility. I will limit myself to subsection (1), which sets out what it describes as section 12 of the Principal Act with 11 subparagraphs—(a) to (h) with various additions such as (bb), (cc) and so on.
The section 12 of the Principal Act which appears here is not the section 12 that one will find if one refers back to the Principal Act. The difficulty is that in this, as in all other social legislation, the parliamentary draftsman uses a kind of obscure code of his own, which is incomprehensible to almost everybody except those who spend their lives dealing with this type of legislation. I can assure Senator Halligan that I am not blaming the Parliamentary Secretary for this. I think there is quite a bit of the Christmas spirit in this Bill, unlike the Bill that is to follow it. I am not blaming the Parliamentary Secretary, although I know that, on strict parliamentary order, one has to hold him responsible. I accept, however, that he had no choice in this matter.
Something ought to be done to try to ease the task of those who try to interpret such legislation. In the explanatory memorandum we are given, a kind of translation of what this Bill means. I have no doubt but that the Parliamentary Secretary's translation is correct. Nonetheless it is not satisfactory that one should be legislating essentially on the basis of the explanatory memorandum. We all read the explanatory memorandum and we have to accept that this is, in fact, what the Bill does; but how is one to know?
Taking subsection (1) of section 3, which of these 11 subparagraphs are being amended? I think it is one figure in subparagraph (a). The remaining ten paragraphs were not apparently amended. They might be, but how is one to find out? The Principal Act was passed 23 years ago. Each year since then there has been at least one Social Welfare Act. This is the third in this year. The total is about 50 or 60. You could go through all these Acts to find out where these various subparagraphs came from and whether they are now being amended. Even that would not be sufficient. You would have to dig through all the ministerial orders made with regard to social welfare in the past 22 years to see whether they ought to have added something to section 12 of the Principal Act.
It seems very unsatisfactory that we should be enacting sections like this that we really do not understand. Taking the Parliamentary Secretary at his word, I have no doubt but that the explanatory memorandum is correct in stating that: "Subsection (1) provides that the application of the Acts to insured ministers of religion may be modified by regulations". I have no doubt that is what it does. For all we know it could do a lot of other things as well. Where an entire section is set out in the Bill as it is here—it is a good development and I should like to see more of it in more Bills—perhaps the parts being amended could be underlined. At the very least the explanatory memorandum should say in some kind of an appendix exactly what amendment is being made. In this case I think it is one figure in subparagraph (a). I might be wrong on that. If one could be told the exact amendment one could be saved a lot of trouble in trying to find out exactly where we are going. It would also be a great easement of the work in future years of social workers and lawyers of all kinds in trying to find out in the case of each of these Bills precisely what they are doing.
Question put and agreed to.
Sections 4 and 5, inclusive, agreed to.
Title agreed to.
Bill reported without amendment, received for final consideration and passed.