Legislation and Parliamentary Documents

While the commercial publishers – LexisNexis and Westlaw – include legislation in their collections, the authorised versions of legislation are available on freely available sites administered by the various parliaments.

Cite legislation according to rule 3 of the AGLC

Commonwealth

The Federal Register of Legislation is the authorised whole-of-government website for Commonwealth legislation and related documents. It contains the full text and details of the lifecycle of individual laws and the relationships between them. The Legislation Register is managed by the Office of Parliamentary Counsel in accordance with the Legislation Act 2003 (Cth).

Victoria

This database contains authorised electronic versions of legislation which are produced for each new Act that is enacted and each new Statutory Rule that is made after that date. These authorised electronic versions are available from this website from the Statute Book repository. From 1 January 2011, under section 64 of the Interpretation of the Legislation Act 1984 (Vic), an authorised electronic version of a Victorian Act or Statutory Rule, or a printed copy of authorised electronic version, has the same evidentiary value as a hard copy Act or Statutory Rule printed by the Victorian Government Printer.

Other Australian Jurisdictions

AustLII maintains its own collections of primary materials: legislation and court judgments ("case law"). AustLII makes every effort to provide a high quality service. However, the material provided by AustLII is not authoritative, and users should confirm information from another source if it is of sufficient importance for them to do so.

JADE receives legislation from the official government websites of the Commonwealth, state and territory legislatures.

The legislation section of LawLex is freely available and will link you to the official authorised website for each jurisdiction. Lawlex is useful as a search tool to find legislation for all jurisdictions in the one place. LawLex now requires you to register an individual account to access the free material.