This Act may be cited as the Post and Telegraph Amendment Act, 1920, and shall be read together with and deemed part of the Post and Telegraph Act, 1908 (hereinafter referred to as the principal Act).

Section seventy-seven of the principal Act as amended by section four of the Post and Telegraph Amendment Act, 1913, is hereby further amended by omitting the words “three hundred pounds” wherever they occur, and substituting the words “five hundred pounds”; and by omitting the words “one thousand pounds” wherever they occur, and substituting the words “five thousand pounds.”

Section four of the Post and Telegraph Amendment Act, 1913, is hereby repealed.

The Schedule to the Post and Telegraph Amendment Act, 1913, is hereby amended by substituting “£5,000” for “£1,000” in paragraph 3 of the forms numbered (1) and (2) respectively.

Section nine of the principal Act is hereby amended by inserting, after the words “Post officer” in subsection two, the words “or Telegraph officer.”

Section twenty-one of the Post and Telegraph Amendment Act, 1919, is hereby amended by inserting, after the words “Post officer” in subsection one, the words “or Telegraph officer.”

Section twenty of the principal Act is hereby amended by adding the following subsections:—

Every person who without the consent of the Governor-General uses or maintains for hire or profit any electric line of communication by telephone or telegraph erected before the passing of the Post and Telegraph Amendment Act, 1919, commits an offence, and is liable to a fine of twenty pounds for every day during which such offence continues.

This section is in addition to, and not in substitution for any of the provisions of, section twenty-nine of the Post and Telegraph Amendment Act, 1919.

Section three of the Post and Telegraph Amendment Act, 1911, is hereby amended by repealing subsection one, and substituting the following subsection:—

Section one hundred and sixty-four of the principal Act is hereby amended by omitting the words “without having first obtained the consent of the Governor in Council,” and substituting the words “otherwise than in accordance with a license granted to him in that behalf by the Minister of Telegraphs.”

Section seventy-eight of the principal Act is hereby amended as on and after the first day of January, nineteen hundred and twenty-one, by omitting from subsection two the word “December,” and substituting the word “March.”

Section eighty-two of the principal Act is hereby amended by omitting from subsection one the word “December.” and substituting the word “March”; and by omitting the words “thirty-first day of March,” and substituting the words “thirtieth day of June.”

Section one hundred and sixteen of the principal Act is hereby amended by omitting from subsection seven the word “calendar,” and by inserting after the word “year” the words “ending on the thirty-first day of March”; and by omitting from the same subsection the words “on or before the end of the then financial year,” and substituting the word “forthwith.”

The accounts to be prepared first after the passing of this Act pursuant to section eighty-two and subsection seven of section one hundred and sixteen respectively of the principal Act shall be in respect of the period of fifteen months ending on the thirty-first day of March, nineteen hundred and twenty-one.

Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in section one hundred and sixteen of the principal Act, requiring the profits accruing to the Post Office Account to be transferred from that account to the Consolidated Fund, it shall be lawful for the Postmaster-General to retain in that account profits which have heretofore accrued or may hereafter accrue to that account; and a special account, to be known as the Post Office Savings-bank Reserve Account, and forming part of the Post Office Account, shall be kept of all moneys so retained.

This section is in substitution for section thirty-six of the Finance Act, 1918 (No. 2), and that section is hereby accordingly repealed.

In addition to the powers conferred on him by paragraph (g) of section eleven of the Post and Telegraph Department Act, 1918, the Governor-General may from time to time, by Order in Council, make regulations authorizing the imposition of fines, not exceeding five shillings in any case, in respect of any breach or neglect of duty by officers of the Department.

Fines may be imposed in accordance with such regulations without an inquiry as provided for in regulations under paragraph (f) of the said section eleven.

Section one hundred and thirty-three of the principal Act is hereby amended by repealing paragraph (e) of subsection one thereof.

It is hereby declared and enacted that the provisions of section thirty of the Post and Telegraph Amendment Act, 1919, shall be read and construed as if there had been inserted in paragraph (a), after the words “appointment made,” the words “on or after the first day of April, nineteen hundred and nineteen”; and the Post and Telegraph Appeal Board is accordingly authorized and directed to hear and determine, as if those words had been so inserted, any appeals which by reason of the omission of such words from section thirty of the Post and Telegraph Amendment Act, 1919, the said Board has either dismissed or not determined.