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Commonwealth act
This Act has been repealed and is no longer in force. It is retained for historical reference.
This is a short piece of legislation that does two straightforward things:
1. Increases the number of Cabinet Ministers allowed The law raises the maximum number of Ministers of State (that is, members of the Cabinet who run government departments) from nine to ten. It also sets a floor — there must be more than seven. So the Cabinet had to have between eight and ten ministers.
2. Sets the total salary budget for those Ministers It appropriates (that is, authorises the government to spend) up to £13,560 per year from the Consolidated Revenue Fund (the main government bank account) to pay all Ministers' salaries combined.
Who does it affect?
Why does it matter? At the time, the number of ministers was strictly capped by law — you couldn't just appoint another minister without an Act of Parliament authorising it. This Act was essentially a machinery-of-government adjustment, allowing the government of the day to expand its Cabinet by one extra minister and fund that position. It also cleaned up the statute books by repealing four older Acts (or parts of them) that had previously governed minister numbers and salaries, including Depression-era emergency pay cut laws from 1931–1933.
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Direct links to the current provisions in Ministers of State Act 1935.
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View on official registerSourced from the Federal Register of Legislation (legislation.gov.au), CC BY 4.0.