Parallel statutes : another look at the origins of Australia’s not-for-profit associations legislation

Abstract

In the middle third of the 19th century Upper Canada (now Ontario) followed by South Australia passed statutes for the legal recognition of religious bodies. The latter statute has already been the subject of a brief history. This article considers the background to the enactment of Upper Canada’s statute and whether South Australia’s might have been a copy of it. The article concludes not only that there is no evidence of copying, but that the background to the enactment of the two statutes was very different. In particular, Upper Canada was concerned with confirming its identity and self-image as an island of Britishness—with all that that implied in the first third of the 19th century—in an American sea, while South Australia was promoting its self-image as a ‘Paradise of Dissent’. The two statutes, while somewhat similar on the surface, were thus motivated by rather different considerations.