Legislation

Legislation, Statutes, Acts, and Acts of Parliament are interchangeable words (see R v Bakewell (1847) 7 E & B 848 at 851). They are used to describe the laws made or enacted by the legislature (Parliament).

Legislation and case law combine to create the primary sources of the law.

When an Act is passed through Parliament it is given a number for that year. Acts can be referred to as a "numbered act", or "sessional act". Example: Australian Education Act 2013 (Cth) (No 67 of 2013).

There are two kinds of Acts:

• Principal Act. Original Act; new legislation
• Amending Act. Acts which change (update or amend) the contents of, or repeal, an existing Act of Parliament.
  Amending Acts usually have the same name as the principal Act, with the word Amendment included. Example: Australian Education Amendment Act 2017 (Cth) (No 78 of 2017).

Act Formats

Australian Acts are available in three forms:

• Numbered or Sessional Acts. Available in print and online
• Reprinted Acts. Western Australian reprints are available in print and online. Commonwealth reprints are available in print only
• Compilations of Acts. Available online only.

Structure of an Act

Familiarising yourself with the common structure Acts and regulations will help you to read and interpret them more easily.

Commonwealth Acts

To familiarise yourself with the structure of Commonwealth Acts, see the Federal Register of Legislation:

Western Australian Acts

Western Australian principal Acts or regulations usually include the following attributes:

• Title, including year of assent
• Table of Contents
• Long Title - statement of what the Act does (generally Regulations do not have a long title; a summary may be in the accompanying explanatory statement or in the objective provision)
• Body of the Act/Regulation – may be divided into a standard hierarchy - Chapters, Orders, Parts, Divisions, Subdivisions or sometimes legislation may simply contain sections/regulations/rules
• Sections  - the lowest groupings or levels
• Sections may be further divided into sub-sections (sub-regulations) and paragraphs
• Schedules – optional; appear when a provision refers to a piece of information too lengthy or complex to include in the text of a provision. May also be referred to as annexures;
• Application, Transitional or Savings provisions - provide additional information on how amendments will apply
• Notes on Amended provisions
• Table of Defined Terms
• History of amendments to sections are located below amended provision

See Western Australian Legislation for examples of Acts:

Once a piece of legislation has been enacted, there are many things that can happen to it. Some questions that are worth considering when dealing with an Act are: 

• Is the act in force? 
• Is all of it in force or only parts of it? 
• Has it been amended?
• Acts can be, and frequently are, amended by other acts, so are you looking at the most up to date version of the act? 

One of the tasks of a legal researcher is to be able to track these changes to legislation and know the state of the Act on any given date.

Amendments

Any change to an Act is known as an amendment. Some amendments are significant (such as the repeal of a section or the insertion of a new section), while others are minor.

Hint: You may come across these abbreviations:

• (ad) = added
• (sub) = substituted.

Act section amendments

You will need to be able to track the changes that have been made to a section of an Act. This is because clients may have been reading a different, superseded version of a section, and you need to be confident about why you are using a different version of the section. You also may find a relevant case to support your client's case and you need to be able to confirm the case is about the same version of the current legislation.

Reprints, compilations & versions

Old reprints, compilations and versions allow researchers and practitioners to jump back in time to see what the legislation was at a particular point in time.

Reprints

A reprint of an Act is an official consolidation of the original Act and all subsequent amendments up to a specified point in time. It is an official or authorised document created under statutory rules, and its creation is recorded in the notes section of each Western Australian Act. The reprints themselves can be found as a physical print document. Reprints of Commonwealth Acts also exist, but do not feature in the notes section of the Act as is the case with a Western Australian Act.

Compilations

A compilation is a version of a law that shows the text of the law as amended at a particular point in time. Each time a Commonwealth Act is amended, a new compilation is added to the Federal Register of Legislation. An authorised version of a compilation is taken to be a reliable source of information by a court or tribunal unless proven to the contrary. 

Versions

A version of an Act is an electronic consolidation of an Act. Versions are not currently considered authoritative. If required for court purposes, the most recent reprints (for Western Australian law) or compilations (for Commonwealth law), along with subsequent amendments, should be used.