Explanatory Memorandum
(Circulated by authority of the Attorney-General, the Honourable Philip Ruddock MP)Schedule 5 - Removal of gender-specific language from the Customs Act 1901
It has been Commonwealth drafting practice since the early 1980's for statutory provisions to be drafted so as to avoid the use of gender-specific language. Gender-neutral language is now used to make the language of Bills more inclusive. In particular, a masculine personal pronoun in a Bill must always be accompanied by a feminine personal pronoun (and vice versa) except in the very rare case of legislation intended to apply to people of one sex but not the other (eg maternity leave legislation).
There are still large numbers of occurrences of masculine pronouns without equivalent feminine pronouns on the statute book. While paragraph 23(a) of the Acts Interpretation Act 1901 provides that words importing a gender include every other gender, existing provisions that use gender-specific language have been progressively amended so as to replace that gender-specific language with gender-neutral language.
Schedule 5 makes amendments to the Customs Act 1901 to remove gender-specific language from that Act and replace it with gender-neutral language.