Coalition of Celebrant Associations

Australia’s Peak Celebrant Body

5. Cost Recovery – not efficient and effective

Efficient5 and effective6

Between 1973 and 2003 the services provided by marriage celebrants appointed by the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department were delivered to the Australian marrying public without the need for a Regulatory function by the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department.

This is because:
  • the State & Territory Registries of Births Deaths and Marriages are responsible to register all valid marriages held within their geographic boundaries
  • since 1973 the state registries have provided information and support to all marriage celebrants who marry couples in their jurisdiction regardless of whether those marriage celebrants are civil or religious, state registered or Commonwealth appointed as part of their responsibilities
  • The Marriage Act 1961 protects all marrying couples from any mistakes made by their marriage celebrant whether religious or civil, whether Commonwealth appointed or State registered.
These three factors still apply.

The 2003 Regulatory Measures were introduced when the previous needs-based system was replaced with an “open market unlimited’ appointment system.

The 2003 changes, which applied radically  different principles to Commonwealth marriage celebrants performing civil  marriages, have never been independently reviewed or evaluated.

However what is manifestly evident is that this “new” post-2003 Commonwealth system is inefficient because the new system:
  1. Continues to appoint new marriage celebrants far in excess of what the marriage market can provide in  opportunities for new marriage celebrants to gain the experience required to increase their professionalism
  2. Proposals under Cost Recovery10 to require a huge annual cost recovery bill currently proposes to correct an insignificant number of Statutory Complaints i.e. $120,000 per Statutory Complaint
  1. Now proposes a Cost Recovery Plan10 that seems unlikely to use any of the major recommendations of the Attorney-General’s own expert advisory group, namely the celebrant associations peak body CoCA, which were specially designed to be both cost effective and efficient AND actually increase professionalism of the sector.
  1. The proposed Cost Recovery Plan10 proposes to expand the services it provides into areas beyond its expertise and which duplicate services already provided by Registries of Birth, Deaths and Marriages and celebrant associations.
5a. Continues to appoint new marriage celebrants far in excess of what the marriage market can provide in opportunities for new marriage celebrants to gain the experience required to increase their professionalism.

Commonwealth marriage celebrants currently marry between 65% and 70% of all marrying couples annually.

Even if Commonwealth Marriage Celebrants were to marry 100% of the marriage market (i.e. all the 120,000 marrying couples annually or a weekly
average of 2307 weddings)
and each marriage celebrant did  only one wedding per week, the number of civil marriage celebrants required  would be 2307, not approximately four times that figure at the current number of approximately 10,000 celebrants.

This is not taking into account the 23,500 marriage celebrants registered by Recognised Religious organisations and the 500 marriage celebrants employed by the State and Territory Registry Offices. i.e. another 24,000 marriage celebrants!

Since 1989, the Crude Marriage Rate11 has dropped substantially
  • Although the number of marriages is now the highest recorded, the population has also increased substantially over time. As a result, the crude marriage rate is now lower than it was 20 years ago.
  • In 2009, the crude marriage rate was 5.5 marriages per 1,000  estimated resident population, compared with 7.0 marriages per 1,000 estimated resident population in 1989.
  • Between 1989 and 2001, the crude marriage rate declined from 7.0 to 5.3. However, after a slight increase between 2001 and 2004, there has since been little variation.
  • Crude_Marriage_Rate
However despite this clear picture that the marrying population do not require more marriage celebrants, the Commonwealth is continuing to appoint NEW marriage celebrants12 at the rate of 45 per month or 450 pa or 2,250  every 5 year review period.

appointment-stats

CoCA’s Submission on Cost Recovery and Increased Professionalism 13 was based on a comprehensive holistic assessment and strategic approach to
increase professionalism by streamlining the process so that Cost Recovery would be both Cost Effective  and Cost Efficient.

To stabilise the sector and ensure that new inexperienced marriage celebrants have access to a reasonable number of weddings to gain experience, CoCA recommended

1. A  moratorium on appointments to be implemented such that celebrant appointments for each Region would only be available each 5 years i.e. celebrants be organized into 30 Regions (5 electorates) and that appointments for each Region only be available each 5 years, and

2. A Cap on appointments such that no new appointments would be made until the average number of weddings per Commonwealth Celebrant pa was less than 25 weddings per celebrant per year.

To ensure that all new marriage celebrant appointments were of a uniform baseline high standard of knowledge and skill in all areas of their competence as a Marriage Celebrant i.e. not only to have sufficient knowledge to apply the Marriage Act, Regulations and Guidelines but also to meet the skills and behaviours required by the Code of  Practice, CoCA has recommended:
  1.  The Setting up of a System of 4 hour Post Training and Pre-Appointment Assessment of both knowledge and skills by Trained  Assessors with qualifications in the delivery of Work Place Training
    as well as Assessment and who are involved in the delivery of the Certificate IV in Celebrancy.
  2. This system to assign prospective applicants to  assessors who are not related to the RTO where the applicant trained The ongoing Cost Recovery of  running this pre-Appointment assessment to be paid for by prospective  celebrant i.e. fully cost recovered. CoCA estimates this would cost the
    applicant approximately $400 for this assessment
  3. The provision of a one-off  amount of approximately $20,000 to set this scheme up. The delay in
    appointment of one new staff position for 3 months would effectively cover the cost of such assessment.
CoCA is extremely concerned to see that the Marriage Law and Celebrant Section has not acknowledged the importance of implementing these particular measures to increase the professionalism of marriage celebrants which is the stated aim of the RIS the AGD prepared.

Proposals in the AGD Discussion Paper on Cost Recovery10 would appear to indicate that MLCS staff, who are neither trained in Work Place Assessment nor Trainers, and who are not trained Marriage Celebrants nor who conduct any marriage ceremonies  (unlike BDM Staff who do the latter) are planning to do a much less thorough assessment of new applicants themselves.

CoCA considers:
  • the unwillingness by the MLCS to implement these key Strategy recommendations means that the Cost Recovery system being imposed on celebrants is neither cost efficient nor cost effective.
  • and so both existing and new marriage celebrants will be paying much more to be regulated than is in any way necessary.
This is particularly un-just as neither 5 yearly reviews nor specified hours of OPD apply to the 24,000 state appointed marriage celebrants.

If the validity of marriages conducted by marriage celebrants truly warranted this level of regulation then ALL marriage celebrants would be required to be trained in marriage law and have the same Regulatory Measures applied to them.

The fact that 24,000 celebrants are not required to be trained in marriage law and have the same Regulatory Measures applied to them logically makes invalid the MLCS arguments for these measure to apply to Commonwealth Marriage celebrants.

Otherwise  the AGD would be taking steps to ensure:
  1. all Australian marriages meet the same requirements for validity, whether the marriage is conducted in a religious or civil setting and
  2. the same grounds for de-registration need to apply to all marriage celebrants.
5b Proposals under Cost Recovery10 to require huge annual cost recovery bill currently proposed to correct an insignificant number of Statutory Complaints i.e. $120,000 per Statutory Complaint.

The number of Statutory Complaints14 against Commonwealth Marriage Celebrants has been extremely low. This table shows the highest number as 20 for 2009.

These Statutory Complaints related to only 20 celebrants of the 8546 celebrants performing  72070 marriages in 2009. That is:
  • a complaint rate of 0.23 % of all those celebrants or
  • 0.03% of all marriages performed by those Commonwealth marriage celebrants.
Table3 statutory complaints

CoCA as yet has not received a breakdown of the  Cost Recovery Fee to be charged to existing celebrants.

However the fee is proposed to be of the order of $240 pa.

For 10,000 celebrants this represents $2.4 million or a cost of $120,000 per complaint!

CoCA estimates that the cost of the 5-year  Review is:
  • one hour of an Administrative Officer’s time in reviewing the celebrant’s computerized file, say $50 every 5 years i.e. $10 pa., and
  • plus $35 per head an administrative component ( 4 staff positions x $80,000 pa with on costs) for the coordination of information for celebrants on the Attorney-General’s Department (AGD)’s website for the other components recommended by CoCA namely
    • provision of information to all celebrants ( by making use of existing resources via Births, Deaths & Marriages (BDMs) and professional celebrant associations)
    • the provision of OPD as approved by the sector’s peak expert body (and delivered by a range of  Registered Training Organisations that train celebrants in the Certificate IV in Celebrants and related VET units, as well as relevant educational programs offered by universities and colleges of advanced education)
    • the collection of Cost Recovery Fees through the existing mechanism for providing resources to all marriage celebrants ( i.e. Canpint)
Thus the annual cost recovery figure would be in the order of $45 per head or $225 per marriage celebrant each 5 years.

As such the fee collection would then be able to be streamlined and fall due at the beginning of each celebrants review period.

A 5 year Cost Recovery Fee would also be  more cost efficient than the Annual Collection of Cost Recovery Fees which represents 5 times the staffing and associated costs.

CoCA also considers that charging all celebrants to duplicate services freely available from the Registry Offices to service those celebrants who do not avail themselves of the services of the BDMs or Celebrant Associations is a system which punishes the most professional and highly skilled celebrants who will not have the need of such
services and rewards those with poor knowledge and skills.

CoCA has recommended that celebrants pay fines if they do not meet their Regulatory requirements ie
  • 5 hours of annual OPD
  • Updating their contact information in the AGD’s online website portal, and
  • Having substantiated complaints made against them
The AGD has expressed concerns about being able to recoup these costs via fines. However CoCA has proposed that a bond could be required at the commencement of the Celebrants career and used to cover unpaid fines, if the celebrant is suspended or deregistered.

5c Now proposes Cost Recovery Plan10 that seems unlikely to use any of the major recommendations of the Attorney-General’s own expert advisory group, namely the celebrant associations peak body CoCA which were specially designed to be both cost effective and efficient AND actually increase professionalism of the sector.

In fact, reviewing the Cost Recovery Discussion Paper against the peak body’s recommendations, it is hard to find anything new to the AGD proposals of May 2011.

recs1-3

recs4-7

recs8-13

The move from paper based to online integrated computerized systems was foreshowed by the AGD at prior meetings of CoCA with the MLCS.

The MLCS had explained that their administrative system for the tracking of each celebrant was in 3 separate paper based files, thus making the task of reviewing each celebrant cumbersome and lengthy in time allocation.

CoCA finds this situation extremely concerning that the time and effort of the peak body whose delegates offer their time and expertise for the betterment of their colleagues, their profession and for the betterment of the general public should have their Recommendations treated in such a superficial way.

This means taxpayers money used in this exercise of so-called “consultation” has not resulted in any major improvements to the system.

Rather the outcome will use Cost Recovery to entrench an inefficient and ineffective system, at a cost to the Stakeholders and the marrying public who choose civil marriage.
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