NOTICE: This guide is currently under review, with a new guide to be launched before Semester 1, 2025. In the meantime, please direct any queries or feedback about this guide to the Library's Digital Experience via our Enquiry and Feedback form.
Each jurisdiction in Australia has an official publisher from which you can obtain legislation.
Federal Register of Legislation is the official publisher for Commonwealth Legislation.
Western Australian Legislation is the official publisher for Western Australian legislation.
Tip: bookmark these sites, as you will be using them very frequently in your course of study and beyond.
This lesson topic will be dealing with researching Western Australian Legislation.
Researching Commonwealth legislation will be dealt with in a later topic.
Source an Act by Title from Legify
Legify is an easy to use tool for accessing authorised versions of Acts and Delegated Legislation.
Simply type in the main words of an Act (but do not include the word Act) eg Civil Liability.
The Results list will include Acts, Regulations, etc. that have these words in the title.
The Results can be filtered by jurisdiction.
The link takes you to the authorised version of the Act.
For Western Australian legislation, this is the Western Australian Legislation website.
Source an Act by Title from Western Australian Legislation
Your task:
You are to use Western Australian Legislation to search for an Act.
Step by step:
- You know the name of the Act you wish to find.
In this example, you are looking for the Civil Liability Act 2002 (WA). - Click on In force and ceased under Acts in the blue panel to the left of the screen.
- If you are not sure if the Act is still in force, use the As passed option.
- Select the appropriate letter from the alphabetic list.
In this example, you will select 'C' for Civil Liability Act 2002 (WA).
- Click on the title of the Act you require.
- Click on the symbols in the area on the right of the screen to open up the Act as a PDF, html or Word document.
- Tip: opening the PDF format and selecting the bookmark symbol shows changes made since previous version.
Source an Act from Western Australian Legislation site by Topic
Searching for an Act by topic:
- Look for Search in the blue column on the left
- From here you can search the Acts, the subsidiary legislation (regulations, rules, orders, etc.) or legislation information.
- Type in the exact phrase you are looking for.
- Tick or untick the boxes next to the Category, Search, and Status boxes to change what and how you search.
- Click on Search.
Now you know how to find Western Australian legislation by title or subject using Western Australian Legislation.
This is a very important skill.
Practice finding other Acts using this resource.
See if you can find Acts relating to dogs, hairdressers, and owner drivers, or any other topic in which you have an interest.
It is all good practice and will help you to hone your skills.