Full description
This article focuses on a hitherto underexplored but increasingly important area
of public expenditure: act of grace payments. Act of grace payments are
voluntary, highly discretionary gifts of money made by the executive in the
absence of any legal duty to do so. The expenditure on such payments in Australia
has been significant, and a lack of transparency creates serious risks to integrity.
Further, the cases of Pape v Federal Commissioner of Taxation, Williams v
Commonwealth and Williams v Commonwealth [No 2] have transformed the
constitutional framework for public expenditure. Accordingly, this article
conducts a fine-grained analysis of the constitutional legality of act of grace
payments at the Commonwealth, state and territory levels. The authors argue that
there are significant constitutional issues with act of grace payments at the
Commonwealth level, and that many state-based act of grace payments are likely
to be illegal. To address these issues, and to reduce the risk that payments will be
made illegally, the authors recommend several legislative and soft law changes.
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