Australian Cases, Legislation and Law Reform (Archive): Home

Legislative research often involves looking at various types of information such as Acts (often called statues), Bills and explanatory memoranda (sometimes called explanatory notes), statutory rules (also called delegated legislation or regulations), parliamentary debates, and parliamentary committee reports.

Following are some tips to guide you in the legislative research process: 

1. Know which version of an Act you are looking for 
2. Be aware of the legislation making process 
3. Use official sources for legislation 
4. Track legislative history, commencement and future changes
5. Use resources to assist in reading, interpreting and understanding legislation 

There are three types of Acts used in legislative research: up-to-date Acts, point in time Acts and Acts as made:

Up to date Act (compilation, including all amendments to date)

When you are looking for up to date Acts, you may come across the following terms:

• Consolidated Act: incorporate amendments made by other legislation since the original legislation was made. A consolidated Act refers to the combination of a number of Acts of Parliament into one codifying statute.
• Act Compilation: current versions of an Act incorporating all amendments to date since the Act was first passed. The text of any amendments that are not in force on the date when the compilation is prepared can be found in the Notes section which is located at the end of the compilation. A compilation is a ‘cut and paste’ version of a law that shows you the text of the law as amended. A compilation may not contain all the amendments you expect - check the notes for details of unincorporated amendments.

Point in time Act

Point in time legislative research means establishing the content of an Act at a specific point in time. Point in time Act is used interchangeably with the term historical Act.

Acts as made

Acts as passed by parliament, also referred to as sessional Acts or Acts as passed. 

This guide is divided by jurisdiction and the legislation page of each tab includes information about the legislation making process. Broadly speaking, an Act starts as a Bill which is presented and debated in parliament. Once the Bill has passed all three readings in each house and it has received royal assent by the Governor-General or the State Governor it becomes an Act. The assent is published by proclamation in the Government Gazette which stipulates the date the Act commences.  It is important to note that an Act or different sections of an Act can commence at future dates and at different times. If you are unsure of whether an Act or sections of an Act have come into operation check legislation commencement tables or annotated statutes.

Acts are commonly referred to as statutes, legislation or law. There are two types of Acts:

• A principal Act refers to an Act of Parliament that deals with a given area of law
• ​An amending Act refers to an Act that alters the operation of a Principal Act, by substituting, inserting, omitting or repealing words or provisions in the Principal Act. When a Principal Act is amended by an Amending Act, the two Acts are to be regarded as one connected and combined of the will of Parliament. 

Official sources for legislation are those published by government printers or government websites. It is important to use these sources over free sites such as AustLII.  Quick tools for legislative research include: 

• Legify is an index of Australian Commonwealth Acts and Regulations.  While it does not contain full text of legislation, it is useful as a quick tool for searching for accurate titles and currency of Australian legislation.
• GovPubs: the Australian Government Publications Guide is a guide to selected types of Australian government publications, such as Acts, Hansards, Explanatory Memoranda, Gazettes and Parliamentary Papers, located in Australia's National, State and Territory libraries or available on the Internet. Please note: this database is no longer actively maintained, however updates periodically occur.

The benefit of these sources is that they link to government websites which are often the official source for legislation. The exception to this is jurisdictions where print legislation is the official version. See the legislation tab under each jurisdiction page for more information. 

Legislation is dynamic and it is important to know how your legislation, and if relevant, provisions have changed over the years by tracking the legislative history. It is also important to check the currency of the legislation you are using, specifically whether the Act or provisions have been incorporated and come into effect.  

Tracking legislative history

• Locate your Act using a reliable source and check the Notes or Endnotes section of the Act to see a chronological list of amending Acts. To see how each section of an Act has been amended, look to the list at the end of the Act titled 'Amendment History' or 'Table of Amendments.' 
• Locate the Act on TimeBase and use the 'Key info' box to find the 'Table of legislation' link to find information about how the Act has been amended.  
• Locate the Act on Lawlex Premium and select the links 'View the History of Amendments to this Title' and 'Check for Amendments since the last Consolidation.'

Tracking legislation commencement 

• Use legislation tables and statute annotations to check whether your legislation has commenced and whether sections of the Act have commenced. Legislation tables are published on government websites, Lawlex Premium and TimeBase. The Library has statute annotations for Federal, Victorian and New South Wales legislation on Lexis Advance (find these via the Publications list on Lexis Advance). 

Tracking potential legislative changes 

• Check the current Bills Activity to find any Bills that have recently passed or may soon pass and affect your Act. Use Capital Monitor Bills Monitor (for Federal, New South Wales, Victorian, Queensland and Western Australian Bills) or the TimeBase Bill Activity RSS (covers all Australian jurisdictions or you can select specific jurisdictions).
• Create an alert on Lawlex Premium to monitor legislative activity.

Materials such as bills, explanatory memoranda, parliamentary papers and government reports are a great way of understanding the background to a particular legislative area. This material is referred to as extrinsic material.  

Secondary sources such as encyclopaedias, text books and journal articles are a good starting point to get an overview of legislation, particularly if you are not sure what legislation governs a particular area. 

Annotated Acts are extremely useful tools a) for understanding and interpreting an Act or a specific section of an Act and b) to trace the history of an Act. Annotated Acts often include:

• Relevant dates - including dates of second reading speeches, assent, and the date the Act came into force
• A list of legislation which has amended the Act and sections which have been amended
• A list of delegated/subordinate legislation promulgated under the Act
• Cases and journal articles which consider and interpret the Act or section
• Commentary on each section of the Act

The Law Library subscribes to the LawNow Legislation Citator on Lexis Advance. 

Databases such as CCH, Lexis Advance and Westlaw AU include annotated Acts on a range of subject areas.  

Alternatively, check the Secondary Sources for Legal Research Guide for further information.

Case law is law developed by judges in courts. Case law research involves reading legal judgments - understanding the reasons behind a judgment and how the law has been interpreted by the judge.

Following are some tips for undertaking case law research.

1. Understand case citation formats
2. Understand the difference between reported and unreported cases
3. Cite the authorised version of a case
4. Use a case citator to find out information about a case
5. Interpreting legal abbreviations

A case citation is the system used to identify the components of a case. Citations vary depending on whether the case is reported or unreported. Case citations are a convenient, standard way of abbreviating the name and publication details of a case.

Citation format for a reported case is generally: 

| Party Names ||(Year)|| Volume||Publication Abbreviation||Starting Page|

Eg. R v Hughes (2000) 202 CLR 535

If a volume number does not assist you to find the case (because volume numbers start from 1 each year, or are not used at all), then the year of the volume is used and placed in square brackets, Eg. Federal Commissioner of Taxation v Vogt [1975] 1 NSWLR 194

The standard way of referring to unreported Australian cases is generally: 

| Party Names ||[Year]||Unique Court Identifier||Judgment Number||(Date of judgment)||[Pinpoint]

For other unreported judgments, including unreported judgments from overseas, use:

| Party Names || (Unreported,||Court,||Judge(s),||Date of judgment)||Pinpoint

Eg. Quarmby v Keating [2009] TASSC 80 (9 September 2009) [11]

Go to the Australian Guide to Legal Citation, 4th edition (AGLC 4) for more information.

Reported cases are those judgments published in law reports. Cases which deal with significant points of law or establish precedents are generally included in law reports. Various reports series are published in databases Lexis Advance, Westlaw AU and CCH.

Unreported cases are those cases not considered to establish an important precedent, or may be too recent, to be reported in a reports series. Unreported Judgments are in Lexis Advance, AustLII, BarNet Jade, Foolkit for Lawyers and the judgment databases on the individual court websites (see the cases tab under each jurisdiction for more information). 

In each Australian jurisdiction there is one series of law reports designated as authorised. If a decision appears in an authorised report series, this is the version that must be cited in student essays and scholarly publications - see Rule 2.2.2 in AGLC 4.

In all Australian courts, there is a convention that the authorised report of a judgment be cited and handed up in court in preference to other versions. In a number of jurisdictions, this convention has been formalised by Practice Direction.

Please see our Authorised Reports Research Guide to find:

• information about what authorised reports are and why they are used;
• which version of a case to use when there is no authorised report;
• a list of authorised report series from Australia and other jurisdictions; and
• the Library's holdings of authorised reports online and in print.

A case citator is an index to case law allowing users to search across jurisdictions for cases using a range of fields.

Case citators provide information about a case such as where the case is cited, a summary of the case, the cases an legislation that were considered in a case, how the case has been treated in subsequent cases and in journal articles. A case citator will link you to the full text of a case is published in a law report series that the publisher has access to. If there is no link to the case search the catalogue for the law report series to get access to the full text.

In Australia, the two subscription case citators are CaseBase on Lexis Advance and FirstPoint on Westlaw AU. LawCite and Jade are two free services available.  

Abbreviations are used regularly in legal publishing. If you are unsure what an law report (or journal) abbreviation stands for you a tool such as the Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations. You can search by abbreviation and the results will give you a listing of all the legal publications that use that abbreviation. 

The Law Library website's Legal Abbreviations page lists various tools to help you in interpreting legal abbreviations.