EXPLANATORY STATEMENT
Statutory Rules 1989 No 91
Remuneration Tribunals (Miscellaneous Provisions) Regulations (Amendment)
(Issued by the Authority of the Minister for Industrial Relations)
Subsection 5(2) of the Remuneration Tribunal Act 1973 (the Act) provides the Remuneration Tribunal with the function of providing advice to public statutory corporations, government business enterprises and other employing bodies in relation to terms and conditions (including remuneration and allowances) on which principal executive offices are to be held. Subsection 3(1) of the Act defines principal executive office as an office or appointment declared by regulations made for the purposes of paragraph 3(4)(ra) to be a principal executive office.
Paragraph 3(4)(ra) of the Act excludes an office or appointment declared by regulation made for the purposes of this paragraph from the meaning of “public office” and consequently from the determination making jurisdiction of the Remuneration Tribunal. The effect of declaring an office to be a principal executive office in a regulation made for the purposes of paragraph 3(4)(ra) of the Act, therefore, is to bring the office into the advisory jurisdiction of the Remuneration Tribunal and to simultaneously exclude the office from the determination making jurisdiction.
Under section 13 of the Act, the Governor-General may make regulations, not inconsistent with the Act, prescribing all matters required or permitted by the Act to be prescribed, or necessary or convenient to be prescribed for carrying out or giving effect to the Act.
The following offices have been declared by these Statutory Rules for the purposes of paragraph 3(4)(ra) of the Act:
• Chief Executive of Australian Airlines Limited;
• Managing Director of the Australian Telecommunications Corporation; and
• Managing Director of OTC Limited.
Other amendments of a minor technical nature to the Remuneration Tribunals (Miscellaneous Provisions) Regulations (the Principal Regulations) made under the Act have also been made.
Accordingly, regulations have been made as follows:
• regulation 1 and sub-regulation 4(2) amend Schedule 1 of the Principal Regulations to reflect the change in name of “the Australian Shipping Commission” to “ANL Limited”, effected by the ANL (Conversion into Public Company) Act 1988, with effect from the commencement of section 9 of that Act;
• regulation 2 defines the term “Principal Regulations” to mean the Remuneration Tribunals (Miscellaneous Provisions) Regulations;
• regulation 3 is a technical amendment that changed the citation of the Principal Regulations from the Remuneration Tribunals (Miscellaneous Provisions) Regulations to the Remuneration Tribunal (Miscellaneous Provisions) Regulations. This was necessary to bring the citation of the Principal Regulations into line with the new citation of the Act, which took effect from 1 March 1989, with the proclamation of the Industrial Relations (Consequential Provisions) Act 1988;
• sub-regulation 4(1) amends Schedule 1 of the Principal Regulations by inserting references to the offices that have now been declared for the purposes of paragraph 3(4)(ra) of the Act, and by renumbering part of the Schedule to maintain the alphabetical order of the offices listed;
• regulation 5 amends Statutory Rules 1988 No 387 by omitting sub-regulation 6(4). That sub-regulation sought to amend the Principal Regulations by omitting from Schedule 1 the reference to “the Australian Shipping Commission” and substituting “ANL Limited”. However, the sub-regulation erroneously referred to item 3 of Schedule 1 instead of to item 2. The amendment which was sought to be made by sub-regulation 6(4) of Statutory Rules 1988 No 387 has now been made by sub-regulation 4(2) of these Statutory Rules.