Video quick start guides to the website

Welcome to the new New Zealand Legislation website. In this short video, we’ll show you how to quickly find Acts, Bills, and secondary legislation using the site’s powerful search tools.

The simplest way to get started is by typing keywords into the global search bar. As you type, suggestions will appear to help you find what you need even faster.

You can run your search straight away, or you can apply filters afterward to narrow or expand your results.

After you run a search, the results page gives you a set of filters on the left. You can filter by legislation status, legislation type, substatus, or by administering agency.

For more precise searching, select Advanced Search. This is ideal when you know the document type, date range, or specific fields you want to search within.

From here, choose which type of legislation you want to search—Acts, Secondary Legislation, Bills, or Amendment Papers. Then enter your search terms in the Title field, the Content field, or both. 

You can use Boolean operators such as AND, OR, and NOT or proximity operators to refine your query. You can also select administering agencies or apply additional content specific filters.

Back on the results page, you can now edit the advanced search you’ve just run. You can also sort results by Most Recent, Most Recently Updated, Alphabetically, or by Date.

Each result card displays the legislation title, its status, and key details such as publication date and legislation number.

If you’d like to stay updated on future changes to the documents captured by your search, you can subscribe to a searchbased RSS feed by clicking the RSS icon in the filter menu.

You can also browse all inforce Acts and secondary legislation by administering agency.

This includes secondary legislation published both by the Parliamentary Counsel Office and by other organisations.

For agencies that publish their own secondary legislation, this page provides external links to where that legislation is published.

This is part of the pilot service the PCO is building to make the NZ Legislation website a single point of access for all primary and secondary legislation.

That’s how to search for legislation on the new legislation website. Everything covered in this video—and more—is available on our Learn More page in the navigation menu at the top of the site.

In this video, we’ll explore how to navigate Acts, Bills, and Secondary Legislation documents once you’ve opened them.

This is a legislation document. 

At the top of the page, the item card shows key information, including the legislation type, status, version date, and the administering agency.

Below this is the title of the legislation, followed by the navigation tabs and tools. 

You may also see an alert showing information about amendments that have not yet been incorporated, editorial changes, or versions.

On the left is the Table of Contents. This lets you jump directly to any section of the document.

You can hide or show the contents panel using the toggle.

The tool bar lets you to hide or show repealed sections and history notes, download the document, and search within it. 

You can also switch between different versions of the legislation at the same section level.

The Versions tab is where you find previous versions of the legislation. This is helpful when you need to check what the law as it applied on a specific date.

You can also download each version or subscribe to an RSS feed to receive alerts when new versions are published.

Some Acts include a Secondary Legislation tab. This tab contains a list of secondary legislation empowered by the Act. There are preset filters to help you locate relevant pieces of secondary legislation.

You can also filter by empowering provision.

You can navigate between the filtered view and the Act itself using the link to the empowering provision, or through the PPD table inside the document.

If an Act has a related Bill you’ll find it here. Opening a Bill item page gives you access to versions and amendment papers.

You can also browse all inforce Acts and secondary legislation by administering agency.

This includes secondary legislation published both by the Parliamentary Counsel Office and by other organisations.

For agencies that publish their own secondary legislation, this page provides external links to where that legislation is published.

This is part of the pilot service the PCO is building to make the NZ Legislation website a single point of access for all primary and secondary legislation.

That’s how to navigate legislation on the new legislation website. You can find everything covered in this video—and more—on our Learn More page, available from the in the navigation menu at the top of the site..