Amendment legislation makes changes to other legislation
Here are the ways that legislation can change, or amend, other legislation.
An amendment Act amends one or more Acts or secondary legislation.
Amendment secondary legislation amends other secondary legislation (and may sometimes, if specifically empowered to do so, amend an Act).
An Amendment Paper proposes to amend a Bill (see more on Amendment Papers).
Additionally, a principal Act, whose main purpose is to set out the law relating to a particular topic, may make consequential amendments to other legislation as part of that purpose.
When viewing Acts and PCO-published secondary legislation on this website, the left-hand tab near the top of the page will identify whether the legislation is principal or amendment.
Amendment legislation will usually, but not always, have “Amendment” in its title. While the basic structure of amendment legislation is the same as other legislation, its content is made up of amendments, which are changes to other legislation.
In Acts and PCO-published secondary legislation, blocks of text to be inserted are shown shaded in grey, as shown below. For legislation published before April 2015, these blocks are shown using quotation marks.
When an Act or PCO-published secondary legislation has amendments that are not yet incorporated, a message displays on the legislation webpage. The message notes that some amendments are not yet incorporated, and links to upcoming amendments.
See also What is the difference between principal and amendment Acts? and What are consolidation or reprint Acts?
Legislation is updated when amendments come into force
When amendments to principal Acts and PCO-published secondary legislation come into force, we update the legislation being amended by publishing a consolidation. The consolidation is a new version of the legislation that is amended with a new “Version as at …” date. This is the date that those amendments came into force. Different amendments within amendment legislation may come into force on different dates. Check the amendment legislation’s commencement provisions for more detailed information.
See About this website to learn how quickly we update amended legislation.
When we publish a consolidation, a publication note is added below each affected provision to record what has changed. This note is called a history note.
See also Previous versions of legislation available on this website.
Currently, agency-published legislation is not always updated with amendments and republished as a consolidation. See Agency-published legislation available on this website.