Hall v Job [1952] HCA 57

H. C. or A. 1952-1953. So THE SQUATTING INVESTMENT Co, Lrp. v. FEDERAL ComMIs- SIONER OF TAXATION.

Kitto J.

HIGH COURT [1952-1953.

wool was supplied for appraisement. Thus their Lordships decided the case by giving effect to what they considered to be the intention permeating the Act, that is to say the intention that the man who supplied participating wool for appraisement, and (broadly) no one else, should participate in distributions. If I understand the judgment correctly, it was for the purpose of emphasising that intention that the expression " personal gift '' was used to describe an amount paid to a participant in a distribution. The moneys payable under the Act, being bestowed as the Parliament had seen fit to bestow them, were described by their Lordships as " payable to the supplier " (1). "It isa true gift ", they said, " to the supplier of the wool" (1); "a personal gift to the parties concerned " (2). It seems clear that what their Lordships were insisting upon by their use of the term " personal gift"? was that s. 10 must be construed in the light of the essential point in the scheme of the Act, which was that the wool disposals profits were to be put into the very hands from which participating wool had been compul- sorily taken. So construed, s. 10 had the effect of attaching to those profits, when they reached the hands of a member of a partnership which had supplied participating wool for appraisement, the incidents which would have attached at the time when the wool was supplied to the proceeds of a sale of the wool made by the partner- ship at that time. That meant that it was incorrect to give the section such a retrospective operation as it would have if treated as allowing events occurring between the supply of the wool for appraisement and the distribution under the Act to alter the destination of the moneys distributed. The destination remained what it would have been if those events had not happened; the recipients were selected by reference to the fact that it was they who had supplied wool for appraisement; the Act operated in favour of them personally.