//
© 2026 Zoe. All rights reserved.
Zoe is a legal information platform. Always consult the official source for authoritative text.
Commonwealth act
This Act has been repealed and is no longer in force. It is retained for historical reference.
This is a wartime emergency borrowing law, passed in December 1939 — just months after Australia entered World War II. It does one core thing: it gives the Treasurer legal authority to borrow up to £25,235,000 (roughly equivalent to several billion dollars in today's money) to fund Australia's military build-up and war effort.
The Schedule (the attached list at the back of the Act) spells out exactly how the £24,985,000 in spending is allocated — the remaining ~£250,000 is reserved for the costs of borrowing itself. The breakdown is:
Peacetime defence build-up (£906,000):
Want the full deep dive?
Zoe can write the in-depth analysis on top of the summary above: how it works, who it affects and what each part actually does.
Direct links to the current provisions in Loan Act (No. 2) 1939.
Zoe has indexed the source text for search and analysis. Use the official register for the original document and download formats.
View on official registerSourced from the Federal Register of Legislation (legislation.gov.au), CC BY 4.0.
Department of Supply and Development (£687,000):
War Services — the big-ticket item (£23,392,000): This is the bulk of the spending, covering active wartime operations across all three services:
The Act includes a practical flexibility provision: if the Department of Defence was reorganised into separate departments (which did in fact happen during the war), the money allocated to Defence could be redirected to whichever successor departments took on those responsibilities.
This Act is a snapshot of Australia mobilising for total war. It shows the Commonwealth rapidly scaling up its military industrial base — building factories, stockpiling ammunition, purchasing aircraft — while simultaneously funding the day-to-day costs of deploying the Navy, Army, and Air Force. It is a foundational piece of Australia's World War II financing architecture.