What it does
The Government Agreements Act 1979 (WA) is a short, targeted statute whose primary function is to remove legal doubt about the effectiveness of certain State agreements that are given parliamentary endorsement. Section 3 is the heart of the Act. It contains an express declaration that every provision of a “Government agreement” operates and takes effect according to its own terms, notwithstanding any other Act or law. This declaration is given retrospective force: the provision is deemed to have operated from the agreement’s inception.
The same section further provides that any purported modification of another Act or law contained within a Government agreement itself modifies that other law for the purposes of the Government agreement. Again, the modification is deemed to have taken effect from inception. The language is deliberately broad. It does not merely say the agreement prevails in the event of inconsistency; it deems the other law to have been altered. This is a powerful form of legislative supremacy granted to a class of contracts.
The Act also supplies a detailed definition of “Government agreement” in s. 2. Three cumulative elements must be satisfied. First, the agreement must be scheduled to, incorporated in, or appearing in an Act whose administration is committed to a Minister by the Governor. Second, the definition extends to any other agreement that has been declared by proclamation to be a Government agreement. Third, the definition expressly “includes” any variation entered into under the agreement or ratified by Parliament, and any document or instrument (grant, lease, licence, permit, approval, authorisation, right, concession, exemption “or any other thing”) made, executed, issued or obtained for the purposes of the agreement or its implementation.
A companion definition of “subject land” identifies the physical area protected by the offence provisions. It covers land set aside or being used for the purposes of, or incidental to, implementing a Government agreement, or land where activity is being, or is about to be, carried on pursuant to the agreement.