said the primary reason for adopting the Statute was to bring Australia "into line uniformly with the other dominions" who had already adopted it. 1942 bill John Curtin, who became prime minister eight weeks before the Imperial Japanese Navy's attack on Pearl Harbor, was finally prompted to adopt the Statute in 1942 after the Fall of Singapore and the sinking of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse. Prior conservative governments had asserted that British military forces would be able to protect Australia, but Curtin, along with External Affairs Minister Dr H. V. Evatt, thought that focusing on an alliance with the United States would be more valuable. Before the 1940s, the United Kingdom had managed Australia's foreign relations as a matter of course. Curtin's decision to formally adopt the Statute of Westminster in late 1942 was a demonstration to the international community that Australia was an independent nation. The immediate prompt for the adoption of the Statute of Westminster was the death sentence imposed on two homosexual Australian sailors for the murder of their crewmate committed on HMAS Australia in 1942. Since 7 November 1939, the Royal Australian Navy had operated subject to British imperial law, under which the two men were sentenced to death. It was argued that this would not have been their sentence if Australian law had applied, but the only way for the Australian government to get the sentences altered was by directly petitioning the King, who commuted them to life imprisonment. Adopting the Statute of Westminster, so that Australia became able to amend applicable imperial law, avoided a potential repetition of this situation. The men's sentences were later further reduced. Provisions of the Act The act had just three sections, one setting out the short title, one declaring that the Act was to come into operation as soon as it received Royal Assent, and one declaring that the Statute of Westminster had been adopted, and was considered to have had effect since 3 September 1939, the beginning of World War II. For a simple Act, it had a significant effect. Section 2 of the Statute of Westminster abrogated the effect of the Colonial Laws Validity Act of 1865, and adopting it meant that laws made by the Parliament of Australia which were repugnant to British laws were no longer invalid. Section 4 of the Statute provided that laws made by the Parliament of the