Don't Forget!!
Read this guide in conjunction with the Australian Guide to Legal Citation.
Legislation Databases
Legify - A free tool that locates and links to the authoritative version of Australian legislation and delegated legislation.
Western Australian Legislation - Western Australian Legislation Database, includes links to Bills and other parliamentary documents.
Federal Register of Legislation - Commonwealth Legislation Database, includes legislative material from the non self-governing territories and Bills and other parliamentary documents including Government Gazettes.
Commonwealth Bills and Legislation Information - Parliament of Australia website, offers searching, browsing, information on proposed legislation and alert services.
LawNow Legislation - Database of current national legislation for all Australian Federal, State and Territory Jurisdictions. Includes related materials and links to judicial consideration (case law) of legislation and/or sections. From Lexis Advance.
Lawlex - Subject index and links to Australian legislative materials, includes links to Bills and Hansard.
Federal Statutes Annotations - From Lexis Advance.
Law Quick Guides
- Law Library Self TourEasily identify key areas of the Law Library
Citing Legislation
The essence of citing an Act is:
Short title + year + (jurisdiction) + pinpoint reference.
Notes:
The notes listed here are not exhaustive, but are designed to point students to the pertinent sections of the Australian Guide to Legal Citation (4th ed, 2018). AGLC rule 3 details the requirements for citing legislation.
Short Title
The citation of an Act begins with the short title of the Act in italics (AGLC rule 3.5).
Year
The year in which the Act was passed should appear in italics after the title, and should be included whether or not the Act includes it in the short title (AGLC rule 3.1.2).
Jurisdiction
AGLC rule 3.1.3 requires that an abbreviated form of the jurisdiction in which the Act was passed should be included in parenthesis after the year. The acceptable form of abbreviation for the jurisdiction can be found at this rule.
Pinpoint Reference
Pinpoint references in an Act usually comprise of an abbreviation and a number, separated by a space.
Examples of the abbreviations that may be required include a section or sections (‘s’ and ‘ss’ respectively) a subsection or subsections ('sub-s' and 'sub-ss' respectively) a part or parts (‘pt’ and ‘pts’ respectively) a schedule or schedules (‘sch’ and ‘schs’ respectively) or an appendix or appendices (‘app’ and ‘apps’ respectively).
Where a subsection is added, it should appear in parenthesis after the section number with no space. In the example above, the section number is 122A and the subsection number is 3.
The abbreviation should correspond to the highest ‘level’ cited in the pinpoint reference. In the example above, the highest level of the pinpoint is to a section, therefore the abbreviation being used is ‘s’.
A more extensive discussion of the correct way to cite a pinpoint reference can be found at AGLC rule 3.1.4.
