More about the New Zealand Legislation website
What does the website do?
It provides New Zealand legislation to anyone with access to the internet.
It provides Acts, Regulations, and Bills, in a way that makes them easy to find and easy to print. It is comprehensive, easy to use, and up to date.
It tracks legislation through its stages of development, from when a Bill is first introduced to Parliament to when it becomes an Act and through all the amendments that are made to it.
What does the website provide that’s new?
It is a one-stop shop. Before, there were several different sites with legislation in different forms. Now, as the website’s library of legislation builds up, you will only have to go to one.
Nothing will be deleted from the site. As the collection of material builds up, you will be able to look back and see legislation as it stood at earlier dates. Up till now this has been very difficult to do.
Printing legislation from the website is easy. And there is an RSS feed to help people keep abreast of changes in the law.
The material presented on the website is generated from a Crown-owned database of legislation. Legislation is drafted, published, and updated using the one system. This is new.
How up-to-date is the website?
We aim to load new Acts within five working days after Royal assent, new Regulations the day after notification in the Gazette, and Bills the day after they become available in the House of Representatives. Current Acts and Regulations are updated with amendments as soon as possible after the amendments are enacted or made. Amendments are consolidated within three weeks.
If an amendment has been enacted or made, but not yet incorporated into the principal enactment, an alert message will link from the principal enactment to the amending legislation. We aim to make the alert message available within five working days of the publication of the amending legislation on the website.
Why provide the new website?
Access to accurate and up-to-date legislation is essential to the workings of any modern democracy. Citizens should have free access to the law, both so they can obey it and so they can contribute to the democratic process. This website contributes significantly to access to legislation.
Is it reliable?
The material presented on the website is generated from a Crown-owned database of legislation. Legislation is drafted, published, and updated using the one system. The Parliamentary Counsel Office will apply the same care in publishing legislation to the website that it has always applied in publishing printed legislation.
However the database of legislative data was purchased from Brookers last year, and while it was created to Brookers’ high standard of accuracy, it was not possible to confirm all its content and formatting before go-live. Its status is therefore unofficial. The legislation printed by the PCO is still the only source of official legislation. (Copies of official legislation can be produced in court in evidence of their contents without further proof.)
This situation is only temporary. All legislation drafted and published within the new system is identical to official printed legislation. In addition, the PCO has embarked on a process of "officialisation", which involves detailed checking of all existing material in the database. Legislation with this "semi-official" status is identified by displaying the image of the New Zealand Coat of Arms in the PDF and "View whole" HTML versions.
When the entire library has been confirmed—which is likely to take at least three years—the intention is for legislation to be proposed to make the database an official source of legislation.
Who is it aimed at?
Anyone and everyone. Access to legislation is everybody’s right. It is for anyone from Ministers of the Crown to the legal profession to members of the public. It also provides legal publishers with source data for use in their own systems.
Does it disadvantage people who don’t have a computer?
No. Legislation continues to be printed as before. Printed copies of legislation will still be available for sale and in public libraries, although of course since public libraries give free access to government websites, the website will available there too.
What do I need to understand about legislation online?
An Act can be big: the Income Tax Act 2004 is 2088 pages long, and took up three of the seven volumes of Acts published that year.
Some legislation is very old, and legislation uses many different structures that can be difficult to accommodate within a single database: the oldest title is the Statutes of Westminster 1275 and, of course, was not drafted using the current standards and structures.
Legislation can be made up of a complex web of amendments which themselves are amended: the Social Security Act 1964 has been amended so many times that the bound copy of the Act, with its many inserted amendments, won’t close any more. The legislation system manages this complexity and presents it on the website in an accessible form.
Will there be further developments?
Yes. The first is to officialise the database—see above. Improvements to performance and accessibility have already been made since the site was launched. The PCO will work on the technical simplification of the legislation system and its business processes. Suggestions from users will also contribute to the developments programme.
Further ideas for developing the website can be found in the Law Commission Report "Presentation of New Zealand Statute Law", at paragraph 73.
Does the website comply with government website standards?
The website has been designed to comply with the mandatory standards of the New Zealand Government Web Standards and Recommendations, allowing the content to be usable by all, irrespective of physical or technological impediments.
Who owns the website?
The website, and the database behind it, is owned by the Crown.
Will it replace printed legislation?
No, legislation will continue to be printed as before. It is likely that the demand for printed legislation will drop, although overseas experience suggests that it won’t disappear.
Who has been involved?
The primary organisations involved: The project was undertaken by the PCO in collaboration with the Office of the Clerk and the Tax Drafting Unit of the Inland Revenue Department. Unisys New Zealand Limited (Unisys) was the PCO's implementation partner for the project, and will host, maintain, support, and enhance the system for the next five years. A small team from Brookers is assisting in maintaining the legislative database, which was itself originally purchased from Brookers.
For further information about the website and how to use it, see the website’s About, Guide, and Glossary pages.