This instrument is a statutory payment determination made under subsection 9(1) of the Federal Financial Relations Act 2009 (as recorded on the face of the determination). The instrument is titled Federal Financial Relations (General Purpose Financial Assistance) Determination No. 135 (May 2020), and it was signed by Michael Sukkar, Minister for Housing and Assistant Treasurer, and dated 14 May 2020. The determination takes legal effect on the day it is made (clause 2).

Mechanically, the determination performs three functions. First, it identifies itself by name (the determination title appears repeatedly in the text). Second, it sets its commencement date as the date it was made (clause 2). Third, and materially, clause 3 directs that the amounts specified in the table that follows are to be paid to the States "for the purpose of making a grant of general purpose financial assistance to those States." The table is headed "General purpose financial assistance for payment on 21 May 2020" and lists line items by State. Only two line items in the table carry positive dollar amounts: Western Australia is allocated $50,197,874.04 and the Australian Capital Territory is allocated $3,389,761.64. All other State entries in the table are shown as a hyphen, which the determination uses in place of a monetary figure. The table aggregates the two positive amounts and reports a total of $53,587,635.68.

The document therefore operates as a direction to pay defined sums on a specific payment date. The source text explicitly ties the payment amounts to the statutory purpose of "making a grant of general purpose financial assistance to those States" (clause 3). The instrument does not itself set conditions beyond that stated purpose, does not include penalty or enforcement provisions, and does not specify administrative details such as account details or appropriation wording within the text provided. The signing Minister and the date of signature are recorded on the instrument, providing the administrative provenance of the direction.

Readers should note the following mechanical facts drawn from the determination text: (1) the legal basis cited on the face of the instrument is subsection 9(1) of the Federal Financial Relations Act 2009; (2) the instrument commenced on its date of signature (14 May 2020) (clause 2); (3) the payment date noted in the table header is 21 May 2020; and (4) the total amount directed to be paid under the determination is $53,587,635.68, allocated almost entirely to Western Australia (approx. 93.68 per cent) with the remainder to the Australian Capital Territory (approx. 6.32 per cent).

The determination invokes three core concepts that structure its effect: the statutory power under which it is made, the concept of general purpose financial assistance, and the discrete allocation of funds by State within the table.

Statutory power: The instrument is made explicitly under subsection 9(1) of the Federal Financial Relations Act 2009, as shown on the instrument's header and signature block. The face of the determination records that the Minister named (Michael Sukkar) "make[s] this determination under subsection 9(1) of the Federal Financial Relations Act 2009." The determination therefore purports to exercise a power conferred by that Act. The text of the determination itself does not reproduce subsection 9(1), so the instrument must be read as an exercise of an enabling power the Act provides; the determination does not set out procedural steps, consultation or criteria beyond what is stated in the short clauses.

General purpose financial assistance: Clause 3 frames the purpose of the payments. It specifies that the amounts in the following table are "to be paid to the States for the purpose of making a grant of general purpose financial assistance to those States." The phrase "general purpose financial assistance" is used as a statutory label for the grant purpose. The determination does not add conditions, earmarks, reporting obligations, or time-limits to that stated purpose within its text. The instrument, on its face, indicates that the funds are intended to enable the recipient jurisdictions to receive a general purpose grant; the precise usage and accountability arrangements for that grant are not set out in this determination.

State-specific allocation: The table that follows clause 3 is the operational core of the instrument. It is headed "General purpose financial assistance for payment on 21 May 2020." The table lists the States and territories by name and, for each, an "Amount of General purpose financial assistance." Only two entries have monetary values: Western Australia ($50,197,874.04) and the Australian Capital Territory ($3,389,761.64). Every other listed jurisdiction,New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and Northern Territory,is shown with a hyphen in the monetary column. The table aggregates the amounts and reports a "Total" of $53,587,635.68 (the arithmetical sum of the two listed amounts).

Formatting and repetition: The instrument repeats the title, commencement clause and determination clause at least twice in the text provided. The repetition does not add fresh legal terms but may reflect the document's layout. The table is also repeated. Practically, the operative clauses are concise: name, commencement (clause 2), and the payment direction (clause 3) with the supporting table.

Direct recipients: The immediate, legally nominated recipients of funds in the determination are the jurisdictions named in the table. Practically, two jurisdictions will receive monetary payments under the schedule: Western Australia (allocated $50,197,874.04) and the Australian Capital Territory (allocated $3,389,761.64). The table records a hyphen for all other jurisdictions (New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and Northern Territory), which indicates no positive payment amount for those jurisdictions under this determination. Therefore, the direct financial effect is concentrated on Western Australia and the Australian Capital Territory.

Commonwealth paying authority: The determination is framed as a direction that "the amounts specified in the following table are to be paid to the States" (clause 3). This implies the Commonwealth's executive, acting through whatever payment authority and agencies administer these determinations, bears the fiscal outlay. The instrument is signed by the Minister for Housing and Assistant Treasurer, and the signature provides the administrative provenance of the direction. The determination does not itself name the specific Commonwealth department or agency that must effect the transfer, nor does it specify bank account details in this text; that operational detail will be relevant to the Commonwealth agencies tasked with actual payment processing.

State and territory treasury and accounting offices: For Western Australia and the Australian Capital Territory, their respective treasury and finance departments will be the operational points of contact to receive, reconcile and record the incoming funds. Those offices will need to recognise the receipt as "general purpose financial assistance" in their budget and accounting systems and allocate the funds in accordance with their internal governance. Other listed jurisdictions have no amounts to receive under this instrument and therefore face no immediate receipting action from this determination.

Auditors, legislators and financial controllers: Parliamentary bodies charged with scrutinising Commonwealth spending, and auditors who examine public accounts, are indirectly affected in that the determination creates a discrete, identifiable Commonwealth expenditure. The magnitude of the transfer may affect departmental and consolidated revenue accounts. The determination itself does not set out reporting obligations, so any audit or parliamentary scrutiny will rely on broader financial management and reporting frameworks not contained in the text.

Service and program operators: Because the funds are described as "general purpose", the determination does not ring-fence them to particular programs or service providers. As a consequence, organisations that ultimately benefit from expenditure by the recipient jurisdictions may be affected only indirectly by recipient decisions about allocation. The instrument does not itself alter contractual arrangements or regulatory duties for third-party service providers.

The determination is compact in its text, so the duties and rights it creates are correspondingly narrow and specific.

Duty to pay specified amounts: Clause 3 operates as the primary operative instruction. It states that "the amounts specified in the following table are to be paid to the States for the purpose of making a grant of general purpose financial assistance to those States." The wording indicates an obligation on the payer to pay the amounts listed. The instrument does not, within its own text, elaborate timetables for payment beyond the table heading "for payment on 21 May 2020." Taken together, the instrument creates an immediate duty to effect the transfers on or by the indicated payment date to the jurisdictions and in the amounts listed.

Recipient right to receive payment: The States named in the table have the right to receive the amounts allocated to them. That right derives from the determination which directs payment. Practically, Western Australia and the Australian Capital Territory acquire a correlative entitlement to the payments specified. The determination does not spell out modalities for asserting non-payment or deadlines for claiming funds; those matters are not addressed within the text.

Purpose constraint: Clause 3 qualifies the payment purpose: the amounts are "for the purpose of making a grant of general purpose financial assistance to those States." The recipient jurisdictions therefore must treat the incoming amounts as general purpose financial assistance. The instrument does not specify more granular constraints such as reporting requirements, specific uses, or temporal restrictions on expenditure. The determination itself does not state further rights of inspection or obligations to report that arise under this instrument.

Ministerial power and signature: The instrument is signed by the Minister (Michael Sukkar) with a dated signature block. The signature records the exercise of ministerial power under subsection 9(1) of the Federal Financial Relations Act 2009. The right to make such determinations, and the duty to record them formally, is exercised by the Minister as the decision-maker on the instrument. The determination text does not contain an appeal mechanism, review provision, or internal administrative review clause.

Absence of enforcement provisions in this instrument: The determination does not specify penalties, sanctions, or enforcement procedures were a party to fail to comply with a duty under this instrument. It does not create obligations for recipient jurisdictions to return funds, nor does it create any express auditing schedule. Any such rights or obligations would need to be located in other statutory instruments or frameworks outside the text provided here.

The text of this determination does not contain any provisions imposing penalties, fines, recovery powers, or enforcement mechanisms. The instrument consists of a short set of clauses that name the determination, fix its commencement, and direct the payment of specified sums to named jurisdictions for the stated purpose. It does not include clauses that create criminal or civil sanctions for non-compliance, nor does it provide for administrative penalties, audit remedies, or clawback provisions.

Absent in the instrument: The determination does not set out:

• any offences or penalties related to misuse of funds;
• conditions that, if breached, would trigger repayment obligations;
• audit or reporting requirements that would generate enforcement pathways; or
• any dispute resolution or review mechanisms within the text itself.

Consequences for non-payment or mis-payment: Because the instrument creates an instruction to pay but does not include enforcement language, any remedy for a failure to pay, mis-payment, or dispute over accounting would need to be sought under the enabling statute cited on the instrument (subsection 9(1) of the Federal Financial Relations Act 2009) or under other statutory or administrative frameworks. The determination itself does not specify those remedial pathways.

Administrative controls: While no enforcement mechanisms are included in the instrument, standard public financial management practice typically expects internal control systems to ensure transfers are made accurately and reconciled. Those controls, and the consequences of their failure, are not described in the determination. Any auditability or accountability will therefore arise from general Commonwealth and recipient jurisdiction financial governance frameworks rather than from clauses within this instrument.

Practical implication: For a practitioner considering enforcement or penalties, the critical point in this instrument is negative: the determination does not itself create sanctioning powers. If enforcement is required, the relevant sources to consult will be other statutory provisions, administrative instruments, or the financial management framework applicable to Commonwealth transfers; none of these materials are present in the text of this determination.

Record and signature as administrative proof: The instrument is signed and dated by the Minister, which provides an administrative record of the decision to make the payments. That signature is the formal attestation that the direction was made under the stated statutory power. While the signature does not create penalties, it does provide documentary evidence that the Minister directed the payments on the dates shown, which is relevant in any subsequent accountability or audit reviews.

The determination expressly records that it is made under subsection 9(1) of the Federal Financial Relations Act 2009. That is the only statutory reference contained within the instrument. The interaction with the enabling Act is therefore explicit on the face of the instrument: the instrument is an exercise of ministerial power conferred by the Act. The determination does not restate subsection 9(1), nor does it set out other cross-references or links to additional statutory requirements, appropriation provisions or financial management legislation within its own text.

Implication of reliance on enabling legislation: Because the instrument is framed as an exercise of a power granted by the Federal Financial Relations Act 2009, the legal authority for the payments derives from that Act. The determination itself does not reproduce the constraints or procedural requirements that subsection 9(1) or other parts of the Act might impose. Therefore, to understand the full legal implications, scope, or limits of the Minister's power and the duties on agencies, one would have to consult the enabling Act for procedural requirements, limits on delegations, or any mandatory consultation or reporting obligations that the Act may impose. The determination contains no internal elaboration of those matters.

Absence of appropriation language: The document does not include an appropriation statement, a reference to consolidated revenue, or express authorisation of funds from a particular appropriation within the determination text provided. The determination therefore leaves open the question of how payment is to be funded administratively and which appropriation authorities are relied upon. That funding and appropriation interaction will be governed by other legislative instruments or appropriation Acts that are not included in this document.

No explicit interaction with program-specific laws: The instrument labels the payment as "general purpose financial assistance" and does not attach it to any specific program, statutory obligation, or service delivery scheme. Consequently, the determination does not alter or interact directly with statutes that regulate particular services, contractual regimes, or regulatory obligations in the recipient jurisdictions. Any such downstream interactions will depend on how recipients choose to allocate the received funds within their existing legal and administrative frameworks.

Administrative law and review: The determination is a ministerial decision recorded in writing and signed by the Minister. The instrument does not include an internal review or merits review clause, nor does it mention judicial review. Interaction with administrative law principles, including any rights to seek judicial review of the ministerial exercise of power, would be governed by the enabling statute and general principles of administrative law outside the text of the determination.

The document provided is a stand-alone determination dated 14 May 2020 and styled Federal Financial Relations (General Purpose Financial Assistance) Determination No. 135 (May 2020). The text contains no amendment clauses, no schedules indicating prior versions, and no marginal notes showing revisions. The determination repeats its title and operative clauses within the text but does not mark any amending instruments or prior determinations being varied.

From the content provided, the amendment history is therefore as follows:

• The determination was made and dated 14 May 2020 (signature block).
• There are no recorded amendments or subsequent variations contained in this document.
• The instrument’s clauses (name, commencement and determination) appear to be the original language and no later insertions, deletions or corrigenda are shown.

Where practitioners need to establish whether this determination has been amended after 14 May 2020, that information is not present in the instrument text shown here. To determine post-enactment amendments or revocation would require consultation of the official legislative instrument register or federal legislative databases. The determination itself does not provide a history section or an amendment log.

The repetition in the provided text of the instrument (the name, commencement, determination and table appearing more than once) appears to be duplication within the document rather than an indication of amendment. The duplication does not change the operative content; the repeated passages state the same terms and the same table allocations. The face of the document gives only the single signature date and does not include alternate dates or amendment signatures.

Practically, therefore, there is no amendment history recorded in the determination text. For any formal legal reliance or compliance task, a practitioner should treat the version presented here as the operative text unless a later instrument expressly amends or revokes it, in which case that later instrument would contain the amendment history. That subsequent instrument is not present in the materials provided.

The determination text contains no reference to litigation, proceedings, appeals, or disputes. It does not identify any cases, nor does it name parties to litigation. There are no schedules, annexures or footnotes that reference judicial decisions. The instrument is a short administrative payment determination and does not itself record any legal challenges or outcomes.

Given the absence of any litigation references in the instrument, there is no litigation history to report within the document provided. If litigation or challenge to the exercise of the Minister’s power under subsection 9(1) of the Federal Financial Relations Act 2009 were brought, such proceedings would be external to the determination and their record would not appear in this instrument. Any record of such litigation would need to be sought from court databases, public records or legal reporting services; those sources are not included in the determination text.

For practitioners evaluating potential legal risk arising from this determination, the useful points are these:

• The determination itself does not record any prior or pending judicial or tribunal proceedings.
• Remedies or challenges to the determination would need to be initiated under the relevant statutory framework or general administrative law principles, none of which are elaborated in the instrument.
• Absent further information, there is no litigation history connected to this specific instrument in the materials provided.

In sum, the determination as supplied contains no litigation history and does not identify any disputes or contested issues associated with its content.

Interpretation of hyphens as zero: The table uses a hyphen in the monetary column for several jurisdictions. The instrument does not explicitly state that a hyphen means "zero" or "no payment" but that is the natural reading in context given other entries are explicit dollar amounts and the total aggregates only the two positive entries. Practitioners should note the document’s format: if relying on automated data extraction or database entry, hyphens must be treated as explicit zero-value allocations and not as missing data, unless a separate record indicates otherwise. Failure to treat hyphens as zero could misrepresent the allocation.

Single-purpose wording: Clause 3 states the funds are "to be paid to the States for the purpose of making a grant of general purpose financial assistance to those States." The term "general purpose financial assistance" is not further defined in this instrument. If a recipient or auditor seeks to trace usage or accountability, the instrument does not provide granular constraints or reporting obligations. That lack of specificity may complicate internal accounting classification or external reporting, particularly if recipient jurisdictions maintain differing definitions of "general purpose" in their own financial frameworks.

Lack of appropriation language and operational detail: The determination does not include appropriation references, bank instructions or an explicit payee account. The practical mechanics of payment (which Commonwealth agency pays, which account to credit, and which appropriation authorises the outlay) are not included in the instrument. Those operational steps will be managed outside the determination text and reliance solely on this document without cross-checking departmental payment orders, appropriation Acts or accounting instructions could produce execution errors.

Timing compression: The signature block is dated 14 May 2020 and the table is headed for payment on 21 May 2020, one week later. That is a short operational window for payment processing given the absence of specified payment instructions in the instrument. Implementers must therefore be alert to the narrow timeframe and the need to reconcile the instrument with internal payment systems promptly.

Repetition and formatting anomalies: The determination repeats its title, clauses, and the full table multiple times within the provided text. The repetition may be clerical, but it could also create confusion for automated parsing systems or for those comparing versions. Users should rely on the arithmetic totals and the signed date as authoritative rather than on the repeated headings.

For Commonwealth implementing agencies

1. Verify authority and provenance:

   • Confirm the instrument is the authentic Federal Financial Relations (General Purpose Financial Assistance) Determination No. 135 (May 2020) signed by Michael Sukkar and dated 14 May 2020, and that it is the operative instrument to authorise the payments (signature block and date are on the face of the determination).
   • Record the reference to subsection 9(1) of the Federal Financial Relations Act 2009 as the enabling authority noted on the instrument.

2. Confirm payment mechanics early:

   • Reconcile the payee list in the table and treat hyphens as zero allocations absent contrary documentation. The table heading states the payment date as 21 May 2020.
   • Obtain or confirm the bank account details, appropriation authority, departmental payment order and internal approvals needed to effect the transfers; these mechanics are not specified in the determination text and must be secured from relevant internal financial management systems.

3. Execute payments accurately:

   • Arrange transfers for Western Australia: $50,197,874.04 and Australian Capital Territory: $3,389,761.64 on or before 21 May 2020 as directed in the table heading.
   • Ensure the exact amounts (including cents) are entered into payment systems to avoid reconciliation issues. The total directed by the instrument is $53,587,635.68.

4. Maintain audit trail:

   • Retain a copy of the determination alongside payment authorisation records, bank confirmations and ledger entries to establish the link between the statutory direction and the financial transaction.
   • Document internal approvals showing compliance with the determination and the internal appropriation used to make the payment.

For State and territory recipients (Western Australia and Australian Capital Territory)

1. Prepare to receive and reconcile:

   • Notify your treasury/finance units to expect the incoming payments on 21 May 2020 and prepare bank account details and receipting procedures.
   • Record the incoming amounts as "general purpose financial assistance" consistent with the wording of clause 3, and ensure appropriate classifications in your ledger.