EXPLANATORY STATEMENT
Statutory Rules No. 104
Veterans’ Entitlements Act 1986
Veterans’ Entitlements Regulations (Amendment)
Issued by the authority of the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs
Section 216 of the Veterans’ Entitlements Act 1986 (the Act) provides that the Governor-General may make regulations, not inconsistent with the Act, prescribing all matters which are by the Act required or permitted to be prescribed, or which are necessary or convenient to be prescribed for carrying out or giving effect to the Act.
The regulations repeal Veterans’ Entitlements Regulations (Amendment), (Statutory Rules No. 50 of 1988), ab initio, and remake a regulation purported to have been made by those Rules.
The repeal will ensure the validity of the Commonwealth’s power to recover overpayments of student allowances from pensions, allowances and other pecuniary benefits under the Act. Statutory Rules No. 50 of 1988, which purported to make a regulation listing student assistance schemes for this purpose, were of questionable validity because they were made before enabling amendments to the Act had come into force.
The questionable regulation has not been used and recovery of student assistance overpayments from Veterans’ Affairs payments has not be initiated until the new regulation has been made.
The new regulation came into operation on the date of notification in the Gazette.
Details of the regulations are set out below.
Regulation 1 - Repeal
Subregulation 1(1) repeals Statutory Rules No. 50 of 1988, in response to doubt expressed about their validity.
Subregulation 1(2) ensures that the Statutory Rules specified in subregulation 1(1) are repealed from the date when they were purported to come into operation, 22 May 1988.
Regulation 2 - Insertion of new Regulation 14A
Section 205 of the Act provides for the recovery of overpayments of pension, allowance or other pecuniary benefit arising under the Act, the Seamen’s War Pensions and Allowances Act 1940 or the Social Security Act 1947.
Subsection 205(1) authorises recovery through the courts or by deductions from a pension, allowance or pecuniary benefit payable under the Act, or a combination of court action and deductions. In
the case of an amount overpaid under the Social Security Act 1947, subsection 205(1) provides for recovery by means of deductions only.
A new paragraph 205(1)(aa) inserted by the Student Assistance Legislation Amendment Act 1988, and a consequential amendment to subsection 205(2), enables student assistance overpayments to be recovered by deductions from payments under the Act to the person overpaid, or from payments to another person, with that person’s consent. This is in line with existing powers to recover Social Security overpayments under the Act.
The relevant student assistance schemes for the purposes of new paragraph 205(1)(aa) are set out in the new Regulation 14A.