or industrial conscription". The exclusion of "industrial conscription" was picked up in Australia in the Public Safety Preservation Act 1923 (Vic), the Section 5 of the National Security Act 1939 (Cth) and the National Emergency Act 1941 (NSW). The exclusion of conscription was not part of the government bill, unlike the Constitution Alteration (Industrial Employment) Bill which excluded "any form of industrial conscription". The Leader of the Opposition, Robert Menzies, criticised the social services proposal as including the power to nationalize the medical and dental professions "by making all doctors and dentists members of one government service which had a monopoly of medical and dental treatment". 4 days later Menzies proposed that the words "(but not so as to authorize any form of civil conscription)" be added to the bill, stating that he had borrowed the form of words from the Industrial Employment Bill, and the amendment was accepted by the government as protecting the medical and dental professions from conscription. Results Discussion This was the fourth of eight referendum questions which have been passed . After the amendment the Social Services Consolidation Act 1947 was passed. In addition the Pharmaceutical Benefits scheme, held unconstitutional in the Pharmaceutical Benefits case, was reintroduced and passed as the Pharmaceutical Benefits Act 1947. Subsequent consideration The meaning of the exception of "civil conscription" was considered by the High Court in General Practitioners Society v Commonwealth where Justice Gibbs took a narrow view of the exception, holding that civil conscription, in the context of medical and dental services, "refers to any sort of compulsion to engage in practice as a doctor or a dentist or to perform particular medical or dental services" and distinguished that from the permissible "regulation of the manner in which a service is performed" if the benefit is to be obtained". The High Court conducted an extensive review of what amounts to civil conscription in Wong v Commonwealth, holding that the Medicare system did not amount to civil conscription of doctors "because doctors do not compulsorily provide service for the Commonwealth, or for other bodies on the Commonwealth’s behalf. The Act does not force doctors to treat or not treat particular patients. Doctors are free to choose where and when they practise". See also Politics of Australia History of Australia References Further reading Austats Special Article on the History of Pensions and other Benefits in Australia Standing Committee on Legislative