Page:History of Adelaide and vicinity.djvu/698

 Xxil ADELAIDE AND VICINITY ^, Notes on the Constitution of South Australia Inasmuch as women may now be qualified and entitled to be registered as voters, they may, therefore, be qualified and entitled to be elected members of the House of Assembly. The qualifications, however, entitling anyone to be elected a Legislative Councillor are quite different ; they are {vci-batiiii) as before stated. The Constitution Act itself only referred to male voters and male members of Parliament. The " Female Suffrage Act " refers only to voters, and although by implication it enables a woman to be elected a member of the House of Assembly, it does not alter the qualifications necessary for a Legislative Councillor. (3.) By Act No. 236 of 1881 the Province, instead of being one electoral district for the election of Legislative Councillors, was divided into four districts. Under its provisions "whenever any Bill for any Act shall have been passed by the House of Assembly during any session of Parliament, and the same Bill, or a similar Bill with substantially the same objects and having the same title, shall have been passed by the House of Assembly during the next ensuing Parliament, a general election of the House of Assembly having taken place between such two Parliaments, the second and third readings of such Bill having been passed in the second instance by an absolute majority of the whole number of members of the said House of Assembly, and both such Bills shall have been rejected by, or fail to become law in consequence of any amendments made therein by the Legislative Council, it shall be lawful for, but not obligatory upon, the Governor of the said Province, by proclamation to be published in the Governinent Gazette, to dissolve the Legislative Council and House of Assembly, and thereupon all members of both Houses of Parliament shall vac:. :• .heir seats, and members shall be elected to supply the vacancies so created ; or for the Governor to issue writs for the election of one, or not more than two, new members for each district of the Legislative Council : Provided always that no vacancy, whether by death, resignation, or any other cause, shall be filled up while the total number of members shall be 24 or more " ; " in the event of the Council being dissolved, six members shall be elected for each of the said districts, and the names of such members shall be placed on the roll of members for the said districts in the order provided for in Section XI 1. of this Act, and thereafter the several periodical retirements of members referred to in Sections VIII. and XIII. of this Act shall date from the day of their election." It will be seen that any Bill in consequence of which the whole of the Legislative Council and the House of Assembly may be dissolved, or in consequence of which new members of the Legislative Council may be elected, must fail to become law, because of its rejection by the Legislative Council, or because of amendments made by such Council. If the Legislative Council simply postpones the consideration of the Bill from time to time until the end of the session no dissolution of or additions to the Council can take place. If, however, the Council so treats the Bill as to entide the Governor to exercise either of these alternative powers, and if the Governor causes the number of Councillors to be increased by the election of additional members, there is some doubt as to what the future results would be. The words " vacancy, whether by death, resignation, or any other cause, ' are capable of two constructions. If we consider these words apart from the rest of the Act, and do not give full weight to some of its main intentions, the words "any other cause" would (according to the recognised rules for the construction of .Statutes). refer only to vacancies analagousto the particular words which they follow ("death" or "resignation"); that is to casual vacancies, and the ordinary periodic elections would be held in due course, the Council being gradually rcxiuced to its nominal number by casual vacancies caused by any of the 1 causes mentioned in the preceding chapter.