Coalition of Celebrant Associations Inc. 
Rona Goold Secretary                                                                                                                                                 P.O. Box 3113
Robertson N.S.W 2577
Phone: 02 4885 2393

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31 Applicant may be refused registration in certain circumstances

(1) A Registrar to whom an application for registration under this Subdivision is made may refuse to register the applicant if, in the opinion of the Registrar:

Conflict of Interest is a principle of concern in a profession, where the office-holder/professional has a duty of care:

• to put the client’s needs or some other authority’s needs before their own,
• to be able to offer impartial advice, and
• to not use the relationship developed in their other work, where power relationships have developed (ie where free and informed consent is hampered) for financial or other benefit. See the Wikipedia references below.
• to use business skills for the efficient and effective management of their professional independent celebrancy practice, but not to exploit their professional role to offer unnecessary or unrelated products or services.*
  (Yes marriage celebrants, like other professionals need business skills, but that does not make them “just a business”.)
  NB Conflict of Interest is not an issue for businesses, where it’s “buyer beware”.

Therefore there is a concept of potential or actual harm that could affect clients.

There appears to be 6 main principles to apply in making a decision about Conflict of Interest:

1. The benefit from another activity may outweigh the benefit to the public of the celebrant role (esp. financially).Thus the celebrant could be tempted to take shortcuts or to act illegally.
   For example; $ 2,000 profit from a reception booking vs $500 for the wedding. Thus back- dating; not checking documents thoroughly etc. may be a way of securing the booking.
   
   
2. A professional is expected to be impartial in advice/ service giving. Thus the celebrant needs to be at arm’s length to related activities.For example; The celebrant is the Function Manager at an RSL Club or owner of reception house. The celebrant may receive a commission for every wedding reception referred to the Club or Reception House, and thus promotes that function centre over another – when the couple’s expectation is that they are receiving “impartial” advice.
   Having relatives or friends in the wedding industry can make the task of being “impartial” very difficult eg advice giving about other wedding related services Here the rewards may not be financial – it may be peace of mind that your son or daughter is in a secure job. Though it could be financial – ie if they don’t have employment then the celebrant may have to support them.
   
   
3. Free and informed consent to choose any celebrant could be hampered by the actions of the celebrant’s other activities.For example, where a celebrant works for a company providing wedding services and the celebrant’s services are part of the wedding package. The classic example is where the holiday resort / island will only allows “its own” celebrants to be part of their wedding package.They may also charge more, when “their celebrants” are not used, effectively giving a “bribe” to take theirs. Such celebrants then can be pressured to back-dating; not check documents thoroughly etc. for fear of losing that work. This concept of a “bribe” – choose your floral needs from my florist business (car hire, catering, hair-dressing etc) and I’ll give you a discount on being your wedding celebrant, ie the couple is not really ‘free to choose’ because they are being bribed to do otherwise. And thus as Guideline 1 the celebrant may take shortcuts or act illegally.
   
   
4. A professional is expected to have some altruistic motive involved in their work.Being in service to others and / or to one’s community is the common thread in professions, not doing work “just for the money”. Giving referral advice about relationship education, and resources for a fulfilling marriage are part of the marriage celebrants’ role. Thus less altruistic rewards from other wedding related work could undermine this aspect of the Marriage Celebrant’s role. 
5. The celebrant’s other activities or roles may impact on their ability to fully and competently prepare and deliver the marriage ceremony.Related wedding activities are more likely to affect the celebrant’s role as they often occur near the time of the wedding. For example, playing the harp may mean not being able to see all the guests and thus, not to be alerted to the fact that one of the witnesses has left to go to the toilet. Driving the limousine or doing photographs before the wedding, increases the chances of being late, and distracted from concentrating on one’s pre-ceremony tasks, like checking all the paperwork etc.
6. The other activities of the professionals can harm the public perception of the impartiality of the profession.If the Government continues to appoint people who own or are employed by wedding related businesses, then the public confidence in the impartiality of marriage celebrant services is likely to fall. Whether we like it or not, the wedding industry is viewed as “money” oriented – recent studies showed that the price of the same services / product rose, if the word “wedding” came into the quote.

Thus at a broad level, it would be better to support other ceremony and celebration work with celebrants being more like the clergy and with other related “professions”.

For example, clergy do other counselling services, marriage preparation, values and ethics education, pastoral care, teaching etc.
If a line needs to be drawn somewhere, we need to model “Marriage Celebrancy” on the Clergy, not Small Business, nor the Law.
Divinity, like Law, is one of the oldest “professions”. See below.

For the long term common good of our professional development, the civil celebrant needs to be more aligned with the clergy than with lawyers – who these days are seen as a rather “money” oriented lot.

The Regulation Impact Statement coming from a “Law” perspective aligns civil celebrants with the “Migrant Agents” perhaps because the Attorney General Department is focused upon matters of law.

However, the beauty of the marriage ceremony is primarily about the celebration of “love”, (clergy) not about being tied up in knots about the legal words (lawyers).

It is “love” that is the focus of the celebrants work – whether one has a “God is Love” focus as the religious clergy do, or whether is the “Love of one’s fellow human being” as the humanitarians do.

CoCA has already submitted a paper on its Position of Conflict of interest in response to a request for comment from the Marriage Law and Celebrant Section.

• Ensuring stricter Conflict of Interest Guidelines would increase professionalism and decrease the number of people entering celebrancy, who assume they can combine a wedding related industry function with being a marriage celebrant.
• In turn, well publicized clearer guidelines should assist in reducing the MLCS workload in doing individual determinations on every application.

Read more … see TABLE OF CONTENTS

* This sentence added later to better express the point being made.

From the Attorney General’s Department – Annual Marriage Celebrant Returns

Below are a set of figures on Civil Marriage Celebrant work supplied by the Attorney General’s Department over a decade ago.

These figures show that

• civil marriage celebrancy has NOT been an occupation capable of sustaining a full-time income for the vast majority of civil celebrants for at least the last 15 years.

• then, as now, the vast majority of civil marriage celebrants (96%) have subsidised their celebrancy work in time or money.

Today 60% of weddings conducted by commonwealth appointed celebrants, 5% BDMs and 35% recognised religious celebrants.

On these figures, that means approx 72,000 weddings for 10,300 celebrants. The Regulation Impact Statement issued by the Attorney General’s Department (AGD) verifies the numbers as 6.6 weddings per celebrant pa.

To return to the 1999 average of 35 weddings per celebrant pa would require de-registering 80% of celebrants and even then a Registration Fee would NOT be justified given the fact that marriage work cannot sustain a full-time income.

Registration Fees may be justified for professions that do offer full-time employment and / or income to sustain a full-time wage, but not for one where part-time wage equivalents for the majority of professionals is evident.

Source: A-G’s Dept. and ABS
CIVIL Marriage Celebrants – UNDER Section 39.2. October 2000 No. of Civil Marriage Celebrants = 1671 In 1999 No of ALL Marriages in Australia 114,300   % Performed by Civil Marriage Celebrants 51.3%   No. Performed by Civil Marriage Celebrants 58,636 CIVIL Marriage Celebrants – UNDER Section 39.2	Figures in Blue were supplied from the Attorney General’s Department (no of CIVIL celebrants) and the Australian Bureau of Statistics. NOTE: Number of CIVIL commonwealth Appointed Celebrants, excluded the non-aligned religious, special needs language groups, special needs disability groups = 1671 This shows in 1999 the average number of weddings per celebrant was 35 ie approx 1 wedding per fortnight averageThis compared with 1995 Ratio: 1 celebrants per 64 weddings pa
Table 1 – CIVIL MARRIAGES 1999 Number Of Weddings Per Annum Celebrants % Celebrants Number Nil 6.78 % 113 1 – 10 29.53 % 493 11 – 25 26.20 % 438 26 – 50 21.70 % 362 51 – 100 12.08 % 202 101 – 150 2.53 % 42 151 – 200 0.95 % 16 200 plus 0.25 % 4	Figures in Blue were compiled from the Annual Returns submitted by celebrants and supplied by the Attorney General’s Department (AGD). The figures in black were extrapolated from the figures supplied by the AGD.Without Annual Returns, there is no objective data to verify the distribution of the number of weddings per celebrant. Recommendation: collection of statistics of number of weddings per celebrant pa be collected and built into the new database / web portal.
Average No. of Weddings per WEEK 1999 Total No. of CIVIL Celebrants 1671 Percentage of CUMULATIVE TOTAL NOS of CM Celebrants   1 or less 1406 84.21 % 84 % Over 1 268 15.81 % 16% Over 2 63 3.75 %	However these figures caution assuming the Marriage Celebrancy can sustain a full-time income. Given the fact that civil celebrants must supply their own resources and wage, an average of two or more weddings per week would be required to make a sustainable income from wedding work alone. Only less than 4% were able to sustain a level of work to make a sustainable wage.
MYTH: that civil celebrants earn a lot from wedding	TRUTH: that civil celebrants subsidise their wedding work, from their own personal wealth or other employment.

Read more … see TABLE OF CONTENTS

This section contains information on the formation and process of the Regional Advisory Panels referred to in Section 2.0.

It is envisaged that:

• Decisions for appointment based upon community need minimium overall average level of X weddings p.a per celebrant in each region, and, and upon the best applicant for an area by interview by an Advisory Panel.
• 30 Regional Advisory Panels, each covering 5 electorates, would advise on level of
• need in their areas over a 5 year review cycle (ie their level of x weddings pa per celebrant may be varied), and to deal with requests for appointments above the level set.
• Resourced by a dedicated administrative officer in MLCS, regional information from the new data base, plus other government statistics.
• Computerised systems, including an Annual Return of Statistics by all celebrants, and Guidelines for appointment should make this task manageable. efficient and effective as possible.
• All applicants would need to reach an Appointment Approval level status, before being considered for interview for vacancies in an area.

Note. This model is similar to doctors applying for “Medicare” provider numbers.

It is recommended that the Regional Average Ratio of Appointment Level per independent civil marriage celebrant be set initially at a Mean Average of 24 weddings pa for that region.

Note: This does not mean * any individual civil celebrant would have to do a set number of weddings. * the region could not set a higher or a lower average number if its geographic area meant that slightly more or less celebrants were needed.

The Guidelines would include the Regional Advisory Committee’s responsibility to ensure that level of appointments were set at a level so that all marriage celebrant would maintain their celebrancy practices to cover normal costs and reasonable recompense for their time.

It is envisaged that:

• A Regional Advisory Panel would meet once every 5 years.
• It would be resourced and supported by a staff person in MLCS.
• That person would do 6 panels each year.
• The government could advertise expressions of interest from appropriate people from that region.
• A venue could be arranged via one on the federal MPs in that area.
• An advisory panel’s role would be to advise the AGD Appointment person.
• A resource pack would be sent to outline the task, what to look for etc.
• A flat fee paid for attendance.

Appropriate Persons for this role would be considered from the following professions:

• Celebrant Association Representative
• A Local Mayor
• Principal of a Public High School in the Region
• President of a Chamber of Commerce
• A representative from Toastmasters or Rostrum

The AGD person would travel to them.

The AGD may come up with an alternate plan for interviewing prospective celebrants.

However, please note that associations and the consultation process have consistently said that the AGD makes the appointments so they should interview and select prospective celebrants.

Read more … see TABLE OF CONTENTS

Draft submitted to the MLCS October 2010

OBJECTIVE:

To ensure that all applicants for the position of marriage celebrant under Section X of the Marriage Act 1961 meet an appropriate uniform standard of knowledge, skills and ‘Fit and Proper Person” criteria (values and presentation), irrespective of their mode of training for the Cert. IV In Celebrancy and registered training organisation with which their qualification was obtained.

STRATEGY:

A national ‘self-funding’ independent system of pre-appointment assessment by panel of appropriately trained personnel administered by the Marriage Celebrant Section and established and reviewed by CoCA and the Attorney General’s Department

COMPONENTS:

1. Assessment Criteria

To establish minimum criteria for

2. Assessment Tools

To establish assessment tools

a. Knowledge Testing – open questionnaire, random questions approx 50% legals

b. Skills by interview in person or via distance eg Skype including verifying identity of person being assessed

3. Assessment Personnel

To ensure sufficient personnel to do assessment Panel of people who

• provide / have provided Cert IV in Celebrancy training
• have Cert IV in Work Place Training and Work Place Assessment
• have conducted a minimum of 40 marriage ceremonies as a registered Marriage Celebrant

4. Assessment Fee

To ensure this system is self supporting

• 2 hours assessment with applicant @ ongoing TAA rate eg $55 per hour ($110)
• 2 hours writing up, making recommendations ($110)
• travel and admin allowance max $40
• component for MSC admin max $40

Total Cost = $ 300 per person

5. Assessment Administrative Process

To ensure independence

• application and fee gathering processes
• matching applicant with an independent assessor
• time frame for assessments and reports to MCS
• over-all reporting mechanism for AG and CoCA

6. Ongoing Review and Evaluation

To identify issues needing to be addressed and that the System is meeting its main Objective

• establishing time frames and processes

COST of Establishing the Above System:

Tender this out:

• Part A – Items 1, 2, 3    above -    $ 4,500
• Part B – Items 3,4,5, 6 -$ 2500
• Travel, accommodation and out-pocket expenses etc $2000

Sub-Total: $ 9000

• CoCA costs
• Travel and Accommodation for reps $1000

TOTAL: $10,000

MECHANISM

CoCA apply for a grant of $ 10,000 to make detailed recommendations on the above to the AG Department Grant SOURCE: AGs or some other suitable Government Grant Program.

Read more … see TABLE OF CONTENTS

Note: The figures quoted in this Appendix were provided by the Marriage Celebrant Section in the early 2000’s as part of the Consultations conducted at that time, as well as from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

An annual fee will not deter people becoming celebrants even at $600. Naively people would think - ”that’s only one wedding” in the same way they will think about advertising costs when starting as a celebrant.

But an annual fee may

• force out lots of competent celebrants, who do not have private wealth or other income at around the 5 year mark,
• mean a constant flow of new inexperienced celebrants coming in.

High uncontrolled numbers will mean that most celebrants will never get the breadth of experience that long term celebrants (pre 1995) have of around 1000 weddings after a 20 year career.

The net effect of that on the sector is a backward one.

The government has no evidence to support the assumption that the majority of civil celebrants can earn a sustainable full-time weekly wage equivalent from wedding work alone.

National Average Rate under Needs Based system:

1995 = 64 weddings per celebrant pa;
1999 = 35 weddings per celebrant pa;

Under “open market”

2011 = 6.6 weddings per celebrant pa;

Under “Professional Celebrant Fee:

Loss of 10% of celebrants only raises no of weddings per celebrant to 8

Loss of 30% of celebrants only raises no of weddings per celebrant to 10.2

To make a full-time weekly wage equivalent from wedding work alone, a civil celebrant would need to average 100 weddings pa.

With 72,000 weddings pa nationally that means 720 celebrants in total and the consequent need for the government to remove:

• 93% of the current 10,300 civil celebrants now appointed.
• 50% of civil marriage celebrants every year to maintain this number as 700+ new celebrants are appointed each year.

An average of one wedding per month per celebrant = 12 pa
An average of one wedding per fortnight per celebrant = 24 pa

It takes 3 to 5 years to get established in a community. So under the current ’unlimited’ numbers approach, the chances are that many celebrants will decide at around 5 years, that the time and money they put in, cannot be justified despite their work satisfaction. This will affect especially those celebrants who do not have private wealth or who need a full-time wage for their family to survive. This has nothing to do with their competency as a celebrant.

If one has to work full-time at another job plus prepare, rehearse and deliver weddings, there is little time to think, research and practice new approaches – a negative for the continuing development of a professional. The net effect of all this is a backward step for marriage celebrancy.

The MLCS state that they are receiving 50-80 applications presently per month.  So the intake is still above retirement/de-registration rates.

Read more … see TABLE OF CONTENTS