EXPLANATORY STATEMENT
STATUTORY RULES 1985 NO. 271
Minute No. 21 of 1985 - Minister of State for Veterans’ Affairs
Subject - Seamen’s War Pensions and Allowances Act 1940
Seamen’s War Pensions and Allowances Regulations (Amendment)
Under section 59 of the Seamen’s War Pensions and Allowances Act 1940, (the Act), the Governor-General may make regulations, not inconsistent with the Act, prescribing all matters which by the Act are permitted or required to be prescribed, or which are necessary or convenient to be prescribed for giving effect to the Act.
The regulations are consequential to the provisions of the Repatriation Legislation Amendment Act 1985 (No. 90 assented to 6 June 1985) which gave effect to the decisions of the Government announced in the Treasurer’s Economic Statement on 14 May 1985.
The provisions of the Repatriation Legislation Amendment Act 1985 which affected the Seamen’s War Pensions and Allowances Regulations were the abolition of future grants of pensions and other benefits to dependants of Australian mariners, other than
the widow or child of a mariner whose death has been accepted by a Repatriation determining authority as related to his employment during the second World War as a mariner. Previously, benefits were also granted to the wife or de facto wife and children of an incapacitated mariner.
Details of the regulations are set out below.
Regulation 1 - Medical Treatment for widows
Former regulation 34 of the Seamen’s War Pensions and Allowances Regulations provided for medical treatment to the dependants of a mariner who died as a result of war service, including the widowed mother or widowed step-mother of a deceased unmarried mariner. No grants of pensions or other benefits will be made to the widowed mother or widowed step-mother of a deceased unmarried mariner, and the references to these people in former sub-regulation 34(1) have been removed by sub-regulation 1(a).
Sub-regulation 1(b) amended the definition of child in former sub-regulation 34(2) of the Seamen’s War Pensions and Allowances Regulations by removing the reference to sub-section 27(2) of the Act. Sub-section 27(2) of the Act was repealed by section 44 of the Repatriation Legislation Amendment Act 1985. Sub-regulation 1(b) also removed the definitions of “widowed mother” and “widowed step-mother” in former
sub-regulation 34(2) of the Seamen’s War Pensions and Allowances Regulations, as these terms have no further application to those Regulations.
Sub-regulation 1(c) maintains the treatment eligibility of the widowed mother or widowed step-mother of a deceased unmarried mariner who was receiving treatment under former sub-regulation 34(1) of the Seamen’s War Pensions and Allowances Regulations.
Authority: | Section 59 of the Seamen’s War Pensions and Allowances Act 1940 |