This Act may be cited as the Magistrates’ Courts Amendment Act, 1920, and shall be read together with and deemed part of the Magistrates’ Courts Act, 1908.

The Magistrate appointed to exercise permanently the jurisdiction of the Magistrate’s Court in the cities of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin respectively, or, if there is more than one Magistrate exercising such jurisdiction in any of the said cities, the principal Magistrate exercising such jurisdiction therein, shall be paid a salary at the rate of nine hundred pounds a year.

In the event of two or more Magistrates being appointed to exercise permanently jurisdiction within either of the cities of Auckland or Wellington, the Magistrate who is not the principal Magistrate, or one of such Magistrates if there is more than one such Magistrate, shall be paid a salary at the rate of eight hundred and fifty pounds a year.

All other Magistrates in New Zealand shall be paid a salary at the rate of eight hundred pounds a year.

All such salaries shall be paid out of the Consolidated Fund without further appropriation than this section.

The rates of salaries provided for by this Act shall be paid as from the thirty-first day of March, nineteen hundred and twenty.

For the purposes of this section the Minister of Justice may determine the order of precedence among the several Magistrates who may for the time being be appointed to exercise permanently the jurisdiction of the Magistrate’s Court in the cities of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin respectively.

This section is in substitution for section three of the Magistrates’ Courts Amendment Act, 1913, and that section is hereby accordingly repealed.

Every Magistrate shall retire from office on attaining the age of sixty-five years.

Section eight of the Magistrates’ Courts Amendment Act, 1913, is hereby amended by omitting from subsection one all words after the words “to exercise,” and substituting the words “criminal and civil jurisdiction in the Chatham Islands.”