Dalgety Downs Pastoral Co Pty Ltd v Federal Commissioner of Taxation [1952] HCA 54

H. C. or A.

1952. Ww

THE QUEEN On Hamiuton KNIGHT ; EX PARTE THE Common- WEALTH SrEAMSHIP Owners: ASSOCIATION.

Kitto J.

HIGH COURT (1952.

retirement of the employee by the employer from operating as a determination of the employment while the employee is enjoying a pension; and the effect of pars. (c) and (d), which define the demanded pension rights otherwise than in the case of a widow, is to provide for a pension, not after the cesser of the employment, but during the employment. The only qualifications required are a particular period of service and either the attainment of sixty- five or infirmity creating inability to render the agreed service. Thus the claim is that an employee having the prescribed qualifi- cations shall receive a pension equal to a proportion of his salary of the last preceding year, but shall not be required to work for it and shall not be retired by the employer while receiving it.

But even if the pensions claimed were pensions to accrue after the cesser of the employment, as indeed is the case with respect to pensions to employees' widows, I should still think it clear that the claims concern an industrial matter. In truth the argument to the contrary is not materially different from that which has already been considered in relation to compensation for injuries. The fact that a claim is such that an award granting it will not produce payments until after the termination of the employment does not justify the conclusion that the subject matter of the claim is not an industrial matter, nor does the fact that the claim is for payments to be made to a person other than the employee. A claim for pensions after the termination of employment is a claim that the rewards of the employment shall include not only immediate remuneration but also, in certain events, a pension either for the employee alone, or for him in the first instance and for his widow after him. It is a claim that a characteristic of the employment shall be that it will carry a pension if it continues until prescribed events occur. It relates to a matter which in my opinion, for reasons similar to those which have been stated with respect to compensation for injuries, is within both the general definition of industrial matters in s. 4 of the Act and the particular categories referred to in pars. (b) and (h) of that definition.