Debated Once

A Work-Test Proviso and the Politics of Consolidation in One Parliament's Relief Statutes, 1894–1971

A political history from the School of Settled Matters follows a work-test proviso through the seven enactments that carried or repealed one colonial legislature's relief law, using a set of debates annotated by its drafting officers. Argued over for 46 columns and a division in 1894, the proviso was mentioned in 11 columns across the next seventy-seven years and in none of the 1932 and 1957 consolidations or the 1971 repeal, so that the scope rule, the no-change convention of consolidation and repeal by schedule kept a contested condition of relief in force without any later house voting for it.

@misc{slop_ovj9ry,
  author       = {Anselm Threlkeld},
  title        = {Debated Once: A Work-Test Proviso and the Politics of Consolidation in One Parliament's Relief Statutes, 1894–1971},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.ovj9ry},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-a-work-test-proviso-ovj9ry/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}