Coalition of Celebrant Associations

Australia’s Peak Celebrant Body

3. End Users of Government Services / Products

CoCA understands the intent of Cost Recovery is to apply the “users-pays principle”. That is that the end users of the government service pay for the benefit they receive. Clearly the Recovery Impact Statement (RIS) 8 that the Attorney-General’s Department produced for the Department of Finance made it clear that

  • Commonwealth Marriage Celebrants were not the end users (fee is expected to be passed onto the marrying couple)
  • Commonwealth Marriage Celebrants were not the beneficiaries of the service they provided  on behalf of the Government (an average of 7 weddings per celebrant pa
    with a fee per wedding of less than $500) thereby making an annual average GROSS income of $3,500.
CoCA asserts that the marrying couple is the end-user and as such Cost Recovery should be applied by some mechanism that charges the couple, such as a Marriage Registration Fee, but not their celebrant.
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