§ (1) This Act may be cited as the Unemployment Insurance Act, 1920.
§ (2) This Act shall come into operation on the first day of October, nineteen hundred and twenty.
§ Amendment made: In Sub-section (2), after the word "shall" ["this Act shall come into operation"], insert the words "save as therein otherwise expressly provided."—[Dr. Macnamara.]
§ Dr. MACNAMARAI beg to move, in Sub-section (2), to leave out the words "first day of October," and to insert instead thereof the words "eighth day of November."
The object of this is to carry forward the date of the application of the Act from 1st October to 8th November. Even that interval will be all too short to enable the necessary arrangements to be made to bring the Bill into force. There is a vast amount of machinery to be got ready before this scheme can be floated. There is the printing of millions of forms and stamps, an enormous provision of paper will have to be made, and there will have to be a very great deal of registration, as will readily be understood when it is remembered that the persons we are covering in insurance are increased from 4,000,000 under the existing Act, to 12,000,000. It is for these reasons physically impossible even to commence the thing with anything like a decent chance 1896 of a fair wind behind it, without altering the date.
§ Amendment agreed to.