Henry VIII clause

Primary legislation in Australia is enacted by Parliament where it is thoroughly debated and amended until there is a final form agreed to by the assembly.  Sometimes this legislation can have in it a Henry VIII clause which allows the executive to alter the law by regulation.  The legislative assembly has no control over the form that such secondary legislation might take.  These regulations eventually work their way back to the parliament which has the power to disallow them, but this might be a year later.  The thinking behind this is that circumstances might arise which require some tweaking of the original bill and it is better to let the executive handle that than go back to parliament and start the whole process all over again.

 This in fact gives the government of the day the opportunity to subvert the intentions of the legislation. For example they could change the date on which the law takes effect, delaying it in the interests of those who might regard it as unwelcome. Even more alarmingly there is new COVID legislation which has secondary legislation, not necessarily limited to the COVID bill, which is removing the possibility of disallowance by parliament, which means that the government has complete control to do whatever it wants to do, without scrutiny from parliament.  A Senate committee is looking into this as an undesirable development.

The name of this exemption clause derives from the fact that Henry VIII was the one who first employed it.