Unofficial consolidation of Climate Change Response Act showing amendments proposed by Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Bill
26 November 2019
An unofficial consolidation of the Climate Change Response Act 2002 has been prepared to show the amendments proposed by the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Bill as introduced on 24 October 2019.
It is intended to assist public submissions and select committee consideration of the amendment Bill. It does not have any official status as a Bill.
View the unofficial consolidation (PDF 2.5MB) …
Unofficial consolidation of Arms Act showing amendments proposed by Arms Legislation Bill
26 September 2019
An unofficial consolidation of the Arms Act 1983 has been prepared to show the amendments proposed by the Arms Legislation Bill as introduced on 13 September 2019.
It is intended to assist public submissions and select committee consideration of the amendment Bill. It does not have any official status as a Bill.
View the unofficial consolidation (PDF 742KB) …
New PCO phone numbers
7 August 2019, updated 6 January 2020
Parliamentary Counsel Office phone numbers have changed from today. The main office number is now 04 333 1000. All DDIs have also changed, so please ask your regular contacts for their new numbers.
Calls to the old numbers will be automatically diverted until 20 January 2020. After this date they will no longer work.
Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Act 2019 enacted
12 April 2019
The Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Act 2019 received Royal assent on 11 April 2019.
Update 16 April 2019: The Arms Act 1983 and the Arms Regulations 1992 have been reprinted as at 12 April 2019 to reflect amendments made by this Act.
Supplementary Order Paper released proposing amendments to Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill
10 April 2019
The Hon Stuart Nash, Minister of Police, has released a Supplementary Order Paper (No 201) that proposes amendments to the Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill.
View Supplementary Order Paper No 201 …
Other Supplementary Order Papers for the Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill may be released before the Bill’s committee of the whole House stage. If so, these would be available on the Bill’s Versions and SOPs page. In addition, the select committee’s report on the Bill is available.
Note that the unofficial consolidation (PDF 492KB) of the Arms Act 1983, released on 2 April, does not include the amendments proposed by Supplementary Order Paper No 201, nor any other amendments that may be proposed.
Unofficial consolidation of Arms Act showing amendments proposed by Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill
2 April 2019
An unofficial consolidation of the Arms Act 1983 has been prepared to show the amendments proposed by the Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill as introduced on 1 April 2019.
It is intended to assist public submissions and select committee consideration of the amendment Bill. It does not have any official status as a Bill.
View the unofficial consolidation (PDF 492KB) …
New location for the online High Court Rules
Update: 20 October 2016
The High Court Rules 2016 are located at:
The online High Court Rules are moving
16 September 2016
The High Court Rules will move to a new location on the New Zealand Legislation website, becoming the High Court Rules 2016, when the Senior Courts Bill (divided from the Judicature Modernisation Bill) is enacted. This is expected to be in the near future.
This means that the High Court Rules 2016 will be published as a separate document in the Legislative Instrument series, which will improve access to the rules. However, existing links to the current rules will need updating.
It is important to note that the High Court Rules 2016 are not a new Legislative Instrument, but rather the current rules republished on the NZ Legislation website as a stand-alone document.
Why
The High Court Rules are currently in Schedule 2 of the Judicature Act 1908. They are therefore required to be published as part of that Act.
Because the rules are part of an Act (and are published this way on the website), some users experience difficulties in finding the rules, and in navigating within them.
How
Two provisions in the Senior Courts Bill (clauses 144A and 151) will change how the High Court Rules are published, overcoming these problems (assuming the Bill passes its remaining stages with the relevant provisions unchanged).
These provisions:
continue the High Court Rules as in force on the date of the Royal assent and deem them to be part of what will become a new Senior Courts Act
require the Chief Parliamentary Counsel to publish the rules, as the High Court Rules 2016, as if they were a Legislative Instrument under the Legislation Act 2012.
The High Court Rules 2016 will therefore be treated as if they were a regular Legislative Instrument, making them easier to find and to navigate.
When
After the Senior Courts Bill has had its third reading and receives the Royal assent, the Parliamentary Counsel Office will have up to 15 working days in which to republish the High Court Rules. While this will be completed as soon as it possible, significant work is involved, and so the rules may not available in their new location immediately following Royal assent.
Implications for accessing the republished High Court Rules
Many organisations and individuals maintain links (from websites, intranets, desktops, etc) to the rules. These will need updating when the rules are republished.
Any updates about timing will be posted on this page.
If you have any questions, please contact us.
Statutory Regulations as made 1936–2007 now online
4 May 2016
Now available online, a complete collection of all Statutory Regulations published in the Statutory Regulations series 1936–2007:
These regulations are as originally made—they don’t include any later amendments or show whether they have been revoked, or are expired or spent.
The new collection, provided by the PCO and hosted by the New Zealand Legal Information Institute (NZLII), makes available free online PDF versions of regulations that were previously only available in printed volumes or at a cost.
Historical legislation available through NZLII
Alongside the Statutory Regulations 1936–2007 As-Made Collection, the partnership between the PCO and NZLII provides free access to the New Zealand Acts 1841–2007 As-Enacted Collection, the 1908 Consolidation of Acts, and the growing collection of New Zealand Historical Bills.
To create the as-made collection, the PCO has scanned Statutory Regulations published in annual bound volumes beginning with 1936, which is when the Statutory Regulations series began, through to 2007—over 21,000 documents. An OCR (optical character recognition) process has been applied to the resulting PDFs to make text searching possible, although further checking has not been carried out so search results are not guaranteed.
Current legislation on New Zealand Legislation website
The Statutory Regulations 1936–2007 As-Made Collection supplements the Statutory Regulations and Legislative Instruments provided by the New Zealand Legislation website. For current legislation, legislation revoked since 2007, and versions of legislation from 2008 until now, always visit legislation.govt.nz.
On the New Zealand Legislation website, Statutory Regulations and Legislative Instruments include all amendments that have been made to them. When they are amended, earlier versions are retained—but early Statutory Regulations may not be available in the form in which they were originally made.
Note: Statutory Regulations can include Orders in Council, rules, notices, determinations, proclamations, or warrants. Since 5 August 2013, the term “Legislative Instrument” (defined in section 4 of the Legislation Act 2012) is used. To find Statutory Regulations on the New Zealand Legislation website, search under Legislative Instruments.
Historical Bills 1854–2008 now online
14 March 2016, updated 10 November 2016
The Parliamentary Counsel Office has been working with its free access partner, the New Zealand Legal Information Institute (NZLII), to make historical legislative documents available online. The latest results of this collaboration, Bills from 1854 to 2008, are now on the NZLII website in PDF format:
The collection includes Bills that became Acts as well as those that did not.
The collection has been put together from scans of bound volumes provided by the PCO and the Office of the Clerk, and the documents hosted by NZLII. While most volumes were taken apart to enable scanning, some of the earliest (not yet available online) were too rare to treat in this way. Instead they were scanned by the Australasian Legal Information Institute (in Sydney) using a non-destructive scanner that produces high-quality images from books open to only 30°.
For current Bills, and Bills that were current from 2008 onwards, search the New Zealand Legislation website. Find links to both the Historical Bills 1854–2008 Collection and the New Zealand Acts 1841–2007 As-Enacted Collection on the New Zealand Legislation website homepage under Useful Links.
Official legislation now in HTML format
5 January 2016
From today, the Chief Parliamentary Counsel issues official electronic legislation under section 17 of the Legislation Act 2012 in both HTML and PDF formats via the New Zealand Legislation website. Previously, official online legislation was in PDF format only. And before 6 January 2014, only hard copy legislation was official. See the Legislation (Official Electronic Versions) Notice 2015 and media statement.
Providing official legislation in HTML format is important since this is the version that website users refer to most often. It will no longer be necessary to download a PDF in order to view official online legislation.
What does “official” mean?
From section 18 of Legislation Act 2012: “An official version of legislation as originally enacted or made is taken to correctly set out the text of the legislation.” If the legislation has been amended, an official version “is taken to correctly state, as at the date at which it is stated to be reprinted, the law enacted or made by the legislation reprinted and by the amendments (if any) to that legislation”.
Section 16 of the Legislation Act states that “All courts and persons acting judicially must take judicial notice of all Acts, regulations, and legislative instruments”. Official legislation is taken by the courts to correctly state the law without any further proof of its accuracy unless the contrary is shown.
What legislation is official?
Versions of Acts and Legislative Instruments that display the New Zealand Coat of Arms on their front page are official. See Status of legislation on this website: what is official for more information.
Who needs to know?
All website users benefit from official online legislation, because the accuracy of official legislation has been checked and assured.
Access to online official legislation saves time and effort for all those involved in court proceedings. Legal practitioners and litigants in person gain easy access to accurate online legislation.
Changes to format of legislation
11 April 2015
We have made some minor changes to the format of legislation and to the New Zealand Legislation website.
The changes have no legal effect—they do not change the meaning of legislation.
The changes have been made in response to user demands.
We have followed the principle that any new format must be:
unambiguous and readable/easy to follow
as simple as possible to implement technically
workable in both the PDF and HTML formats (PDFs are for downloading and printing; HTML is the "regular" website view).
The changes include:
amendments in Bills and amending legislation—blocks of text to be inserted into other legislation are shaded, instead of enclosed in quote marks
improvements to the usability of the New Zealand Legislation website
page size—this is standardised to A4; printed legislation has more text on the page, with slightly less surrounding white space.
The changes apply to legislation published (or republished) from 11 April 2015 onwards—the changes are not retrospective. This means that when you view or print legislation last published before 11 April 2015, it will be in the "old" format. Existing legislation will take on the new format only when it is republished, for example if it is later amended.