{"id":"C1973A00045","name":"States Grants (Housing Assistance) Act 1973","slug":"states-grants-housing-assistance-act-1973","collection":"act","jurisdiction":"commonwealth","status":"repealed","isInForce":false,"actNumber":"45 of 1973","makingDate":null,"administeringDepartment":null,"currentVersion":{"id":2541,"registerId":"commonwealth-C1973A00045-current","compilationNumber":null,"startDate":"2026-03-29","status":"Repealed","reasons":null,"registeredAt":null},"sections":[{"sectionNumber":"1","sectionType":"section","heading":"States Grants (Housing Assistance) Act 1973","content":"States Grants (Housing Assistance) Act 1973\n\nNo. 45 of 1973\n\nAN ACT\n\nTo make Advances to the States of Financial Assistance in connexion with Housing and to Authorize the Borrowing of Certain Moneys by the Commonwealth.\n\n\\[Assented to 7 June 1973\\]\n\nBE IT ENACTED by the Queen, the Senate and the House of Representatives of Australia, as follows:—\n\nShort title.\n\n1. This Act may be cited as the States Grants (Housing Assistance) Act 1973.\n\nCommencement.\n\n2. This Act shall come into operation on the day on which, it receives the Royal Assent.\n\nAdvances to States for year 1973–74.\n\n3. The Treasurer may, during the period of six months commencing on 1st July, 1973, make advances to a State, in accordance with an agreement executed in pursuance of the Housing Agreement Act 1973 by or on behalf of the Commonwealth and that State, of amounts not exceeding in the aggregate the amount specified in the Schedule opposite to the name of that State.\n\nAdvances to States to be made out of Consolidated Revenue Fund or Loan Fund.\n\n4. Advances to a State for the purposes of section 3 may be made out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund or the Loan Fund.\n\n  \n\nAuthority to borrow.\n\n5. The Treasurer may, during the period commencing on the date of commencement of this Act and ending on 31st December, 1973, in accordance with the provisions of the Commonwealth Inscribed Stock Act 1911–1966, or in accordance with the provisions of an Act authorizing the issue of Treasury Bills, borrow moneys not exceeding in the aggregate Eighty-four million six hundred thousand dollars.\n\nApplication of money borrowed.\n\n6. Moneys borrowed under section 5 shall be issued and applied only for the expenses of borrowing, for the purpose of making advances to the States in accordance with section 3 and for the purpose of making payments to the Consolidated Revenue Fund in accordance with section 7.\n\nReimbursement of Consolidated Revenue Fund from Loan Fund.\n\n7. (1) Where an amount has been paid out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund under this Act, the Treasurer may authorize the payment to that Fund, out of the Loan Fund, of an amount not exceeding the amount so paid.\n\n(2) In any statement of the receipts and expenditure, or of the expenditure, of the Consolidated Revenue Fund prepared by the Treasurer under section 49 or section 50 of the Audit Act 1901–1969, amounts paid to the Consolidated Revenue Fund under sub-section (1) of this section shall not be shown as receipts of that Fund, but shall be shown as having reduced the total of the amounts expended from that Fund under this Act.\n\nAppropriations.\n\n8. The Consolidated Revenue Fund and the Loan Fund are appropriated as necessary for the purposes of this Act.\n\nSCHEDULE Section 3\n\n|                                                                | $          |\n| -------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------- |\n| New South Wales.............................................   | 28,600,000 |\n| Victoria...................................................    | 18,750,000 |\n| Queensland.................................................    | 7,750,000  |\n| South Australia..............................................  | 14,750,000 |\n| Western Australia............................................. | 10,500,000 |\n| Tasmania..................................................     | 4,250,000  |\n|                                                                | 84,600,000 |","sortOrder":0}],"analysis":{"summary":{"complexity_score":2,"scope_assessment":{"changed":false,"description":"This Act is narrow and precisely targeted. Its sole purpose — advancing specified sums to the states for housing under the Housing Agreement Act 1973, funded by Commonwealth borrowing — is fully reflected in every section. There is no evidence of scope creep or expansion beyond the original intent. It is a single-purpose, single-year appropriation instrument."},"complexity_factors":["Very short Act — only 8 operative sections plus a schedule","Minimal defined terms — no interpretation section at all","Limited cross-references — only to the Housing Agreement Act 1973, Commonwealth Inscribed Stock Act 1911–1966, and Audit Act 1901–1969","Straightforward conditional logic — advances are simply capped by the schedule amounts and time-limited to six months","One minor accounting mechanism (section 7 reimbursement between funds) adds a small layer of complexity","Simple tabular schedule with fixed dollar amounts per state"],"plain_english_summary":"## States Grants (Housing Assistance) Act 1973\n\nThis Act is a straightforward **financial mechanism** that authorised the Commonwealth (federal) government to hand out money to the states to help fund housing in the 1973–74 financial year.\n\n### What does it do?\n\n- **Advances to the States**: The federal Treasurer was empowered to make financial advances (essentially loans) to each state for housing purposes during the **first six months of the 1973–74 financial year** (July to December 1973). These advances had to be made in accordance with a separate agreement under the *Housing Agreement Act 1973*.\n- **Total funding pool**: The Act authorised a total of **$84.6 million** across all six states, with specific amounts allocated to each:\n  - New South Wales: $28.6 million\n  - Victoria: $18.75 million\n  - South Australia: $14.75 million\n  - Western Australia: $10.5 million\n  - Queensland: $7.75 million\n  - Tasmania: $4.25 million\n\n### Where did the money come from?\n\nThe Commonwealth had two options for where to draw the funds:\n- The **Consolidated Revenue Fund** (the government's main operating account, funded by taxes), or\n- The **Loan Fund** (money the government itself has borrowed).\n\nTo top up the Loan Fund, the Treasurer was separately authorised to **borrow up to $84.6 million** on behalf of the Commonwealth — using existing mechanisms for government borrowing (such as inscribed stock or Treasury Bills) — before the end of 1973.\n\n### Why does it matter?\n\nThis Act was part of a broader federal-state partnership to fund **public housing** across Australia. It reflects the Commonwealth's role in channelling money to states (which are primarily responsible for housing) under a formal housing agreement. It is essentially a **one-time, time-limited funding instrument** for a single financial year.\n\n### Who does it affect?\n\n- **State governments**, who received the funds to spend on housing programs.\n- **Australians seeking public or affordable housing** in 1973–74, who were the ultimate intended beneficiaries.\n- The **Commonwealth Treasurer**, who had the administrative responsibility to manage and authorise the advances and borrowings."},"issue_detection":{"absurdities":[{"type":"impossible_compliance","section":"Section 3 & Section 5","severity":"low","reasoning":"Section 3 permits advances during the six months from 1 July 1973 (i.e., up to 31 December 1973). Section 5 permits borrowing up to and including 31 December 1973. Section 6 requires that borrowed money be applied to making those advances. If any borrowing occurs on 31 December 1973, the borrowed funds must simultaneously be applied as advances by the same date, leaving zero time for settlement or disbursement mechanics. In practice this is an edge-case impossibility at the final day of both windows.","confidence":0.55,"description":"The borrowing window in section 5 ends on 31 December 1973, but the advance window in section 3 closes on 31 December 1973 as well (six months from 1 July 1973). While the dates nominally align, the Treasurer must borrow money *before* or *at the same time* as making advances. Because borrowing and advancing are concurrent obligations with the same hard deadline, there is no temporal buffer to borrow funds, settle the loan, and then disburse — creating a practical impossibility at the margin of the deadline."},{"type":"self_contradicting","section":"Section 7(2)","severity":"medium","reasoning":"Under standard accounting logic and the Audit Act 1901–1969, a payment *into* a fund is a receipt of that fund. Section 7(2) explicitly overrides this by directing that such payments appear as reductions of expenditure rather than as receipts. This creates an internal logical contradiction: the fund receives money (a factual event) that the statute declares must not be recorded as a receipt. The provision legislates an accounting fiction at odds with the underlying economic reality and the general framework of the Audit Act.","confidence":0.82,"description":"Section 7(2) requires that reimbursements from the Loan Fund to the Consolidated Revenue Fund shall NOT be shown as receipts of the Consolidated Revenue Fund, but instead as reductions in expenditure. This creates an accounting fiction that misrepresents the fund's true cash flows — money physically enters the Consolidated Revenue Fund but is statutorily required to be recorded as though it never did. This is a self-contradicting accounting treatment: a real cash inflow is mandated to be presented as a negative expenditure rather than a receipt."},{"type":"other","section":"Section 5","severity":"low","reasoning":"The citation '1911–1966' refers to the Act as amended to 1966, but by June 1973 further amendments may have intervened. Australian legislative drafting of the era used hyphenated citations to denote the consolidation point, meaning the authority granted is anchored to a potentially superseded version of the enabling Act. This is a low-severity drafting quirk rather than a fatal flaw, but it introduces ambiguity about which procedural framework governs the borrowing.","confidence":0.6,"description":"Section 5 authorises borrowing under the Commonwealth Inscribed Stock Act 1911–1966 — legislation that by 1973 had been subject to numerous amendments and was on the cusp of repeal and replacement. Referencing a hyphenated consolidation citation ('1911–1966') as a fixed borrowing authority creates a potential gap: if any amendment between 1966 and 1973 materially altered borrowing procedures, the section may authorise borrowing under a framework that no longer exists in the form specified."},{"type":"impossible_compliance","section":"Section 3","severity":"medium","reasoning":"The advance power is contingent on bilateral agreements between the Commonwealth and each State being 'executed in pursuance of the Housing Agreement Act 1973'. If any State had not yet executed such an agreement by the time the Treasurer wished to make an advance, no advance could lawfully be made to that State regardless of the appropriation. The Act provides no fallback mechanism, no deadline for States to execute agreements, and no power to make advances in the interim. This creates a practical compliance gap where the Act's central operative purpose can be frustrated by a State's delay in executing an agreement.","confidence":0.78,"description":"Section 3 conditions advances on the existence of 'an agreement executed in pursuance of the Housing Agreement Act 1973' — but that Act was also passed in 1973, and the agreements it contemplates may not yet have been executed at the time this Act commenced (7 June 1973, before the 1 July 1973 advance window even opens). The Treasurer is authorised to make advances only if agreements already exist, yet the agreements depend on a separate Act whose own operative machinery may not have been completed."}],"contradictions":[{"severity":"medium","section_a":"Section 6","section_b":"Section 7(1)","confidence":0.72,"description":"Section 6 requires that borrowed moneys be applied only for three purposes: expenses of borrowing, advances to States (s.3), and payments to the Consolidated Revenue Fund (s.7). Section 7(1) then authorises those payments to the Consolidated Revenue Fund out of the Loan Fund. This creates a circular flow: the Loan Fund receives borrowed money (s.5), pays it to the Consolidated Revenue Fund (s.7(1) via s.6), and the Consolidated Revenue Fund simultaneously funds advances to States (s.4). The two funds are thus both authorised as sources for the same advances (s.4 allows either fund), but s.6 restricts borrowed money to s.7 payments which simply reconstitute the Consolidated Revenue Fund. The net effect is that borrowed money can end up funding advances indirectly via the Consolidated Revenue Fund, in apparent tension with s.6's enumerated and ostensibly exhaustive list of permitted applications."},{"severity":"low","section_a":"Section 4","section_b":"Section 8","confidence":0.5,"description":"Section 4 states that advances 'may be made out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund or the Loan Fund', framing this as a discretionary choice. Section 8 appropriates both funds 'as necessary for the purposes of this Act'. The word 'necessary' in s.8 implies a needs-based or minimum appropriation, whereas s.4's discretionary framing implies the Treasurer has an unconstrained choice of funding source. If the Treasurer elects to draw entirely from one fund when the other was 'necessary' for other purposes of the Act (e.g., reimbursement under s.7), the appropriation in s.8 may be insufficient or misallocated, creating tension between the discretionary drawdown in s.4 and the necessity-qualified appropriation in s.8."},{"severity":"high","section_a":"Section 3","section_b":"Section 5","confidence":0.88,"description":"Section 3 authorises advances to States up to the amounts in the Schedule, which total exactly $84,600,000. Section 5 authorises borrowing of 'not exceeding in the aggregate Eighty-four million six hundred thousand dollars' — the identical figure. However, section 6 requires that borrowed money also cover 'the expenses of borrowing'. If the full $84.6M borrowing cap is consumed by advances to States, there is no room within the borrowing ceiling to also fund the expenses of borrowing as mandated by s.6. Conversely, if borrowing expenses are paid from within the $84.6M cap, the full Schedule amounts cannot be advanced to all States."}]}},"importantCases":[],"_links":{"self":"/api/acts/states-grants-housing-assistance-act-1973","history":"/api/acts/states-grants-housing-assistance-act-1973/history","analysis":"/api/acts/states-grants-housing-assistance-act-1973/analysis","conflicts":"/api/acts/states-grants-housing-assistance-act-1973/conflicts","importantCases":"/api/acts/states-grants-housing-assistance-act-1973/important-cases","documents":"/api/acts/states-grants-housing-assistance-act-1973/documents"}}