{"id":"C1936A00005","name":"Orange Bounty Act 1936","slug":"orange-bounty-act-1936","collection":"act","jurisdiction":"commonwealth","status":"repealed","isInForce":false,"actNumber":"5 of 1936","makingDate":null,"administeringDepartment":null,"currentVersion":{"id":3776,"registerId":"commonwealth-C1936A00005-current","compilationNumber":null,"startDate":"2026-03-30","status":"Repealed","reasons":null,"registeredAt":null},"sections":[{"sectionNumber":"1","sectionType":"section","heading":"Orange Bounty Act 1936","content":"ORANGE BOUNTY.\n\nNo. 5 of 1936.\n\nAn Act to provide for the Payment of a Bounty on the Export of Oranges from the Commonwealth.\n\n\\[Assented to 20th March, 1936.\\]\n\nBE it enacted by the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, the Senate, and the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Australia, as follows:—\n\nShort title.\n\n1. This Act may be cited as the Orange Bounty Act 1936.\n\nDefinitions.\n\n2. In this Act, unless the contrary intention appears—\n\n“bounty” means bounty under this Act;\n\n“the Secretary” means the Secretary of the Department of Commerce of the Commonwealth.\n\nBounty to be paid.\n\n3. There shall be payable, out of moneys appropriated by the Parliament for the purpose specified in item five of Division one hundred and nine of the Second Schedule to the Appropriation Act 1935–36, the bounty specified in this Act.\n\nSpecification of bounty.\n\n4. The bounty shall be payable in respect of oranges exported from the Commonwealth to destinations other than New Zealand during the year One thousand nine hundred and thirty-four, in respect of which the provisions of the Commerce (General Exports) Regulations (being Statutory Rules 1926, No. 22, as amended to the date of the export of the oranges) were complied with.\n\nRate of bounty\n\n5. Bounty shall be payable at the rate of Sixpence for each case of oranges exported.\n\nPayee of bounty.\n\n6.—(1.) The bounty shall, subject to this section, be payable to the exporter of the oranges.\n\n(2.) Where a person exports oranges through an agent, the bounty may be paid to that agent, who shall be liable to account therefor to the exporter.\n\nCondition of payment.\n\n7. A payment of bounty shall not be made under this Act unless the claimant for that bounty has lodged an application therefor with the Secretary on or before the thirtieth day of June, One thousand nine hundred and thirty-six.\n\n  \nOffences.\n\n8. A person shall not—\n\n(a) obtain or attempt to obtain payment of any bounty which is not payable;\n\n(b) obtain or attempt to obtain payment of any bounty by means of any false or misleading statement; or\n\n(c) present to any officer or other person doing duty in relation to this Act or the regulations any document, or make to any such officer or person any statement, which is false in any particular.\n\nPenalty: One hundred pounds or imprisonment for one year.\n\nPower to call for information.\n\n9.—(1.) The Minister, or any person thereto authorized in writing by him, may, by notice in writing, call upon any person to furnish to him within such time as is specified in the notice, such books and documents and such information as the Minister or that authorized person thinks necessary in relation to compliance with this Act or the regulations made thereunder or any suspected contravention thereof.\n\n(2.) Any person who, without reasonable excuse (proof whereof shall lie upon him), fails, after receipt of a notice under the last preceding sub-section, to comply with the requirements of the notice shall be guilty of an offence.\n\nPenalty: One hundred pounds or imprisonment for one year.\n\n(3.) Where any person who has so failed to furnish the books, documents or information is a claimant for bounty, the Minister may, if he thinks fit, withhold payment of any bounty payable to the claimant until he has furnished the required books, documents or information.\n\nReturn to be laid before Parliament.\n\n10. A report upon the working of this Act, and a return setting forth—\n\n(a) the amount of bounty paid under this Act; and\n\n(b) such other particulars as are prescribed,\n\nshall be prepared in the month of September, One thousand nine hundred and thirty-six, and shall be laid before each House of the Parliament within fifteen sitting days of that House after the thirtieth day of September, One thousand nine hundred and thirty-six.\n\nRegulations.\n\n11. The Governor-General may make regulations, not inconsistent with this Act, prescribing all matters which by this Act are required or permitted to be prescribed, or which are necessary or convenient to be prescribed, for carrying out or giving effect to this Act, and in particular for prescribing penalties not exceeding Fifty pounds or imprisonment for a period not exceeding three months for any offence against the regulations.","sortOrder":0}],"analysis":{"issue_detection":{"absurdities":[{"type":"retroactive_impossibility","section":"4","severity":"high","reasoning":"Section 4 specifies the bounty is payable in respect of oranges exported 'during the year One thousand nine hundred and thirty-four.' The Act was assented to on 20 March 1936. Exporters in 1934 had no knowledge of, and no ability to comply with, an Act that would not exist for over a year. While retrospective bounty schemes are not unknown, this creates a fundamental temporal absurdity: the Act imposes compliance conditions on past conduct that was necessarily blind to the Act's future requirements.","confidence":0.95,"description":"The Act, assented to on 20 March 1936, purports to pay a bounty on exports that occurred during the year 1934 — over a year before the Act existed. Exporters could not possibly have complied with this Act at the time of export because the Act did not yet exist."},{"type":"impossible_compliance","section":"4","severity":"medium","reasoning":"Claimants and the Secretary must reconstruct the exact state of Statutory Rules 1926 No. 22 as they stood at the precise date of each individual orange shipment in 1934. There is no mechanism in the Act for determining or certifying which version applied, and any amendments between 1926 and the export date must be traced through subordinate legislation. This is administratively burdensome to the point of near-impossibility for ordinary exporters.","confidence":0.8,"description":"Section 4 requires compliance with the Commerce (General Exports) Regulations 'as amended to the date of the export of the oranges' — but the version of those regulations applicable to a 1934 export is a moving, historically contingent target that must be determined retrospectively by reference to a past point in time, creating severe evidentiary and administrative difficulties in 1936."},{"type":"circular_definition","section":"2","severity":"low","reasoning":"The definition of 'bounty' adds no meaning whatsoever. It tells the reader that 'bounty' means 'bounty under this Act' — which simply restates the term without explaining what a bounty is. A reader who does not already know what a bounty is gains nothing from this definition. The substantive content (sixpence per case, payable on exported oranges) is found in sections 4 and 5, not in the definition. The definition is logically vacuous.","confidence":0.97,"description":"The definition of 'bounty' is purely circular: 'bounty means bounty under this Act.' It provides no substantive content and relies entirely on the word being defined to define itself."},{"type":"other","section":"10","severity":"low","reasoning":"While not strictly impossible, the tight September 1936 reporting window means the Secretary must process all claims lodged by 30 June 1936, make all payments, compile statistics, and produce a report all within the month of September 1936. This is a very compressed administrative timeline for what may be a large number of individual export claims. Additionally, sub-section (b) requires 'such other particulars as are prescribed' — but any regulations under s.11 specifying those particulars may not yet exist or may be issued very close to the reporting deadline.","confidence":0.65,"description":"The Act requires a report to be prepared in September 1936 and laid before Parliament within fifteen sitting days after 30 September 1936 — but the application deadline for bounty claims is 30 June 1936 (s.7). This means Parliament is to receive a report on the 'working of this Act' before all bounty payments would necessarily be finalised and audited, potentially requiring a report on incomplete payment data."},{"type":"impossible_compliance","section":"3","severity":"medium","reasoning":"The payment mechanism is rigidly tied to a single, named budget line item in a separate Act. The Orange Bounty Act 1936 creates legal entitlements (ss.4–6) but makes payment contingent entirely on an external appropriation item that this Act cannot itself modify or supplement. If the appropriation is insufficient or misidentified, the entire scheme collapses — yet the Act still imposes offence provisions (s.8) and information-gathering obligations (s.9) that presuppose a functioning bounty payment mechanism.","confidence":0.72,"description":"Section 3 appropriates funds by direct reference to 'item five of Division one hundred and nine of the Second Schedule to the Appropriation Act 1935–36.' If that specific appropriation item does not in fact exist, is amended, or is exhausted, there is no fallback and no bounty can be paid at all — making compliance with the rest of the Act impossible."}],"contradictions":[{"severity":"medium","section_a":"4","section_b":"7","confidence":0.75,"description":"Section 4 makes the bounty payable for exports in 1934, but section 7 requires the claim to be lodged by 30 June 1936. The two-and-a-half year gap between the export activity (1934) and the claim deadline (1936) is internally inconsistent with section 4's requirement that compliance with the Regulations be demonstrated 'as amended to the date of the export' — claimants must somehow prove regulatory compliance for acts performed years earlier, with no evidentiary preservation mechanism in the Act."},{"severity":"low","section_a":"8","section_b":"4","confidence":0.7,"description":"Section 8 creates offences for obtaining bounty 'which is not payable' and for false statements, implying an ongoing, forward-looking enforcement regime. However, section 4 restricts the entire bounty to a single, historically closed category of exports (1934 oranges). The offence provisions are drafted in the present tense as if they apply to a continuing scheme, but the scheme is entirely retrospective and time-limited, creating a mismatch between the general offence language and the Act's narrow, closed scope."},{"severity":"low","section_a":"9","section_b":"7","confidence":0.68,"description":"Section 9(3) allows the Minister to withhold bounty from a claimant who fails to provide information, for an indefinite period — 'until he has furnished the required books, documents or information.' However, given the Act is a one-off retrospective scheme for 1934 exports with no ongoing operation, there is no statutory time limit on this withholding power, meaning it could be exercised indefinitely even after the scheme has otherwise concluded. This sits in tension with the clear deadline and finite scope of section 7."}]},"summary":{"complexity_score":2,"scope_assessment":{"changed":false,"description":"The Act is exactly what it says on the tin — a narrow, purpose-built bounty scheme for a single agricultural commodity exported in a single year. There is no evidence of scope creep or expansion beyond the original intent. The Act was conceived and drafted as a time-limited, self-exhausting measure with a built-in expiry through its hard claim deadline and mandatory parliamentary reporting. It never purported to be anything broader."},"complexity_factors":["Only 2 defined terms in the definitions section, one of which ('bounty') is circular","Single, flat payment rate with no tiers or calculations required","Limited cross-referencing — references the Appropriation Act 1935–36 and Commerce (General Exports) Regulations, but only to establish funding source and eligibility, not to import complex operative provisions","Narrow and self-contained scope — applies only to a single commodity (oranges), a single calendar year (1934), and a single export direction (excluding New Zealand)","One-off scheme with a hard claim deadline (30 June 1936), meaning no ongoing or iterative application of the law","Minimal conditional logic — the main eligibility condition (compliance with export regulations) is binary: you either complied or you didn't","Short Act with only 11 sections, each brief and plainly worded"],"plain_english_summary":"## Orange Bounty Act 1936 — Plain English Summary\n\n**What does this law do?**\n\nThis Act created a one-off government payment (a \"bounty\" — essentially a cash reward) to Australian orange exporters. If you exported oranges from Australia in **1934** — not to New Zealand, but to other overseas destinations — and you followed the relevant export rules at the time, the government would pay you **sixpence per case** of oranges exported.\n\n**Who does it affect?**\n\n- **Orange exporters** who shipped oranges overseas (excluding New Zealand) during the calendar year 1934.\n- **Export agents** who acted on behalf of exporters could also receive the payment, but were legally required to pass it on to the actual exporter.\n\n**Key conditions and deadlines**\n\n- Exporters had to **lodge a claim** with the Secretary of the Department of Commerce **by 30 June 1936** — miss that date, no payment.\n- The money came from a specific line item already approved in the federal budget (the *Appropriation Act 1935–36*), so Parliament had already set aside the funds.\n- Claimants had to have complied with the **Commerce (General Exports) Regulations** at the time of export.\n\n**Safeguards and enforcement**\n\n- It was a **criminal offence** (up to £100 fine or one year's imprisonment) to fraudulently claim the bounty, make false statements, or present misleading documents.\n- The **Minister** (or someone authorised by the Minister) could demand books, records, and information from anyone involved. Refusing to comply without a good reason was also a criminal offence carrying the same penalty.\n- If a claimant refused to hand over requested documents, the Minister could **withhold payment** until they did.\n\n**Transparency**\n\n- A formal report on how the scheme worked — including the total bounty paid — had to be prepared in September 1936 and tabled before both Houses of Parliament.\n\n**Why does it matter?**\n\nThis is a narrow, historically specific piece of legislation. It was essentially the government's way of giving a financial boost to Australian citrus exporters who had already shipped oranges two years earlier in 1934, likely as part of Depression-era agricultural support. It had a built-in expiry — once all valid claims were paid and the parliamentary report tabled, the Act had effectively served its entire purpose."}},"importantCases":[],"_links":{"self":"/api/acts/orange-bounty-act-1936","history":"/api/acts/orange-bounty-act-1936/history","analysis":"/api/acts/orange-bounty-act-1936/analysis","conflicts":"/api/acts/orange-bounty-act-1936/conflicts","importantCases":"/api/acts/orange-bounty-act-1936/important-cases","documents":"/api/acts/orange-bounty-act-1936/documents"}}