 Dear Editor
First and foremost may I say that I am against any registration fee on marriage celebrants for all the reasons outlined in the Coalition of Celebrant Association Interim Response. However, at the same time one needs to consider fall back positions.
The Regulation Impact Statement (RIS) allows for, indeed expects that, Registration fees will be passed onto the marrying couples whom they think spend heaps on every wedding!
So what is the fairest way to do this?
I suggest two ways.
One is to have a Presentation Marriage Certificate fee.
The Presentation Marriage Certificates have the Commonwealth Crest on them, are given to every couple whether married by a BD&M, Religious Celebrant or Civil Marriage Celebrant. They are numbered. They are required to be given to the couple by the Marriage Act at the end of every legal Marriage ceremony.
They can only be bought from one monopoly supplier, Canprint, who can easily sell packs of 5 as they now do packs of 10 and of 50. The $20 to $25 surcharge per certificate (marriage tax/ or professional celebrant fee) would not severely impact upon the few weddings rural marriage celebrant or the small independent churches doing the occasional nuptial.
Since even the mainstream “Recognized Denominations” religious must buy these certificates, it would not exempt them from “passing on the costs to the couple” and therefore the costs of regulating the whole Marriage Act would be done in a non-discriminatory manner and Canprint could charge an administration fee to be negotiated with the department. Spoils and misprints could be returned for a credit or a refund from Canprint.
It is noted that when passing on the costs to the couple, the RIS projects a per ceremony surcharge of a bit more than $18 per marriage Solemnization, so a $20 or $25 Presentation Marriage Certificate could allow Canprint a bit of profit after administering the distribution costs and annoyance factor. After all, they charged $25 per Celebrant for a Compulsory badly made DVD and made a windfall profit on that monopoly exercise!
A second suggestion is fee for the Marriage Celebrants Listing on the Attorney General's website:
Since the Registrar(s) of Celebrants is legally required to list the names and contact details etc of all those Celebrants (Religious or Civil) who are empowered under the Marriage Act to Solemnize marriages, there could be an annual “Listing fee” for us to have our names displayed as “Registered Marriage Celebrant “ or “Section 115” (Recognized Denomination Religious Marriage Celebrant) on the AG's website.
With over 35,000 of marriage celebrants in total, a small annual listing fee would reap a huge amount of “cost recovery” monies. There would be no discrimination and every marriage celebrant who wanted to do so could be there every year.
Lastly, I want to mention a few other matters that might put the whole exercise into a different but “Professional” perspective.
1. Professionals like Doctors, Nurses, Psychologists, Lawyers, etc all have to carry professional Insurance.
If, for example, an Allied Health Professional wants to be registered with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency so that they can work in their profession, they are required to have proper professional insurance.
Every year, if there have been no complaints about the person's work from the Regulation Agency or to the insurer, the person gets to reregister. If there is or was a problem, the person cannot get insurance.
To practice in the profession the person will have to have an unblemished record, or else get no insurance and not be able to reregister. The Regulatory Agency lets the commercial necessities sort the practitioners out.
Insurance requirements could be a way of protecting the public from those celebrants that mess up identities or don’t register marriages or who don’t do the right thing. It is a way to effect the goals that the AGs thinks that it has to perform inside the department with more public servant ”legal resources” that are eliminated by other “Professions”.
With some associations offering Celebrant insurance and with multiple providers of Celebrant Insurance, an association and MLCS led push to get everybody into an accountable insurance scheme could be the solution to some of the departments headaches.
2. Also the MLCS could institute a FAQ similar to what they have in the Explanatory Material regarding names.
This is the second decade of the twenty first century with websites that have non-public portals for members. CoCA has beem asking the MLCS to institute this sort of service to eliminate many of those alleged 18,000 inquiries, for which they say they have to get more lawyers.
3. Senior Celebrant Advisors.
Over the years, celebrants also been asking for other innovations, such as highly knowledgeable senior celebrants to field questions for those thousands of stand alone celebrants that choose not to (or cannot afford to) join an association.
Name supplied.
|
