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Legislation: 1. Numbered Acts

This Guide provides information on how to find Acts, Delegated Legislation, Bills, Parliamentary documents and extrinsic materials for Australian jurisdictions. It also provides information on how to keep up to date with Legislation.

Numbered or Sessional Acts

When a Bill has received Royal Assent, it becomes an Act of Parliament. When the Acts are officially passed, they are assigned a unique and sequential Act number, for that year or session of Parliament. They are published with the title, number and year on the cover. When passed in this way, they are known as Numbered Acts, or Sessional Acts. These Numbered Acts and are sometimes referred to as acts "As passed", or "As made", because they are in the original version, before any amendments have been incorporated.

As this number is unique, it is a useful device for tracking a particular Act, even if you don't have the title. These Acts are available online and are also issued in pamphlet form on Royal Assent. At the end of each year they are reissued in numerical order in bound volumes.

This series of Numbered or Sessional Acts includes both Principal (original) and Amending Acts: 

  • Principal Acts (also known as Original Acts) - which represent new Legislation.
  • Amending Acts - which are Acts designed to update or amend existing Acts. Amending Acts may have the same or a similar name to the Act which they modify, often with the word "amendment" in the title. This usually does not apply when an Amending Act updates many existing Acts.

The 2 tabs that follow provide a Western Australian example and a Commonwealth example. 

Western Australian example:

  • The Witness Protection (Western Australia) Act 1996 (WA) is Act number 11 of 1996. This is the Principal / Original Act. In WA, the Principal Numbered Acts are also referred to Acts "As passed", because they are the original version, before any amendments have been incorporated. You can find "As passed" Acts using the "As passed" link in the WA Legislation database. (This is located to the left in the "Acts" section). 
  • The Corruption and Crime Commission Amendment (Misconduct) Act 2014 (WA) is Act number 35 of 2014. This is the Amending Act. This Act amended the Witness Protection (Western Australia) Act 1996 (WA) (the Principal Act) in some way. All Amending Acts are considered "As passed" Acts. 
  • Both Acts are issued a number. 

All Amending Acts are listed in the Compilation Table section of the Principal Act. Top tip: You can use the Ctrl F trick to find this section easily. In the Compilation table, we are told that section 39 of the Corruption and Crime Commission Amendment (Misconduct) Act 2014 (WA) amended the Witness Protection (Western Australia) Act 1996 (WA) (the Principal Act):

When you conduct research relating to Numbered Acts, 

  • it is sometimes necessary for you to compare the Online Compilation Act, that incorporates all the amendments, with its original "As passed" version, in order to ascertain the changes which have been made over time.
  • you may want to find out how an Amending Act, has amended a Principal Act.

In any event, you will need to do an As passed search in the Western Australian Legislation database. 

To do an As passed search in the Western Australian Legislation database, for a specific Act - Principal or Amending - you will need to look for the respective Act either by year or title and then locate the Act from the list that is generated:

 

In this example, the red boxes relate to an As passed search for the Principal Act, and the black box relates to an As passed search for the Amending Act. Both Principal Acts and Amending Acts are issued a number, so scroll until you find the number that has been assigned, in the list that is generated. Here is an example of a list that appears when you Browse Acts by Year:

 

Your final step is to open the document and look for the relevant section and find out how it has amended the Principal Act. 

Some WA and Cth Numbered Acts may be available on the Compactus on Level 3 of the Beasley Law Library.

Let's turn our attentions to how this kind of research can be undertaken in the Federal Register of Legislation. 

Consider the Cth Extradition Act 1988 (Cth) (No.4 of 1988). This Act has been amended many times and one of the Amending Acts was the Crimes and Other Legislation Amendment Act 1997 (Cth) (No 20 of 1997).

In this example, the Crimes and Other Legislation Amendment Act is the Amending Act, and the Extradition Act is the Principal or original Act. Both Acts are issued a number. 

For Federal Acts, the Principal Numbered Acts are also referred to Acts "As made", because they are in the original version, before any amendments have been incorporated. You can find "As made" Acts using the "All versions" link in the Federal Register of Legislation database and scrolling down to the "As made" section.

To find the numbered Amending Act, you will need to click on the All versions link, as indicated by the black box:

This will reveal a list of amendments.

The Amending Act Crimes and Other Legislation Amendment Act 1997 (Cth) (No 20 of 1997), is on page 2 of the Amendments list. 

Assume you wanted to find out more about the amendment, such as what section of the Amending Act, amended the Extradition Act 1988 (Cth) (the Principal Act).

To do this, you will need to look through the Endnotes (Endnote 4) of the Extradition Act, to see what section was amended by the Amending Act. You find out that the Crimes and Other Legislation Amendment Act 1997 (Cth) (No 20 of 1997) amended Part II section 15 of the Extradition Act 1988 (Cth) (No 4 of 1988). 

You may also want to find the As made version of the Extradition Act. You can find a link to the As made version, using the All versions link, scroll down to the bottom until you find the As made section. This will allow you to see what a Principal Act looked like when it was first passed.

 

Find numbered Acts online

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