New South Wales Acts | Free Australian Law

Links to sources for Acts, with scope notes and search tips. See also which version of the legislation do I need?

Current Acts
Acts as passed
Point-in-time Acts
Repealed Acts
Tables and guides

Current New South Wales Acts

NSW Legislation	Browse by title to find current Acts. You can also search the full text or titles of Acts. To search within a particular Act, locate the Act then click on the ‘search title’ link at the top of the screen. HTML versions of consolidated Acts are authorised. PDF versions of consolidated Acts are not authorised. Database provided by NSW Parliamentary Counsel’s Office.
Lawlex	Type in the name of the Act in the ‘keywords’ field and the year in the ‘year from’ field. Set the jurisdiction to ‘NSW’ and the document type to ‘principal Act’. Each Act on Lawlex has a ‘home page’ – click on the title of the Act to link to the current version of the Act on the NSW Legislation website. The Act home page also includes links to the Second Reading speech and explanatory note. You can also browse legislation by subject – scroll down past the alphabetic index to find the subject index.
AustLII	Browse by title or use the ‘name search’ to find current Acts by title. Use the ‘database search’ to run a full text search across all current NSW Acts. Check the update status for legislation page to see when the database was last updated. Once you are viewing an individual section of an Act, click on ‘note-up’ to find cases considering that section.
Legify	Type in the name of the Act – matching titles will appear as you type. Click on the relevant item to be taken directly to that Act on NSW Legislation website.

New South Wales Acts as passed

NSW Legislation	Coverage: 1824- The Acts can be browsed or searched. If you know the year and number of the Act, the easiest way to locate the Act is to search. Change the default from ‘current year’ to ‘all’ Acts, then use the ‘limit search to year’ … and/or ‘No’ fields at the bottom of the screen. PDF versions of Acts as passed are authorised from 2000 onwards. Earlier Acts are not authorised, even though they are in PDF format. Database provided by NSW Parliamentary Counsel’s Office.
AustLII	Coverage: 1824- Browse by year or by title. Use ‘name search’ to search the titles of Acts. Use ‘database search’ to search the full text of Acts.
NSW Legislation tables	Coverage: 1824- Scroll down to the ‘Catalogue of Acts since 1824’ section, then click on ‘NSW Acts since 1824’, then enter the relevant date range. This will generate a list of all Acts passed in that period with links to the ‘as made’ version of the Act, plus the assent date. If the Act has been repealed, details of the repeal are noted.

Point-in-time New South Wales Acts (historical versions)

NSW Legislation	Coverage: 2002- plus additional historical versions for selected Acts (e.g. the Crimes Act 1900 has versions back to 1975) Browse or search to locate the relevant Act. Once you have located the Act, click on the ‘historical versions’ link at the top of the screen. Click ‘show all’ to list all available versions. HTML versions of Acts are authorised (the ‘in force’ database includes all consolidated versions of Acts, including historical versions). Database provided by NSW Parliamentary Counsel’s Office.
Lawlex	Coverage: 2002- plus plus additional historical versions for selected Acts (Lawlex provides another way to access the NSW Legislation website) Type in the name of the Act in the ‘keywords’ field and the year in the ‘year from’ field. Set the jurisdiction to ‘NSW’ and the document type to ‘principal Act’. If the Act has been repealed, select ‘include repealed / failed legislation’. Each Act on Lawlex has a ‘home page’ – click on the ‘historical versions’ link to go to historical versions of the Act on the NSW Legislation website.
NSW Legislation tables	Coverage: 1824- (index, with selected links to full text) Click on the ‘NSW Public Acts in Force’ table, enter the relevant date, then click ‘generate table’. This will create a list of all Acts in force on that date. Click on the relevant Act title to be taken to the historical version that relates to the date you selected. If the Act title isn’t hyperlinked, it means there isn’t a historical version relevant to that date on the website.
NSW reprinted Acts table	Table of Acts reprinted 1972-2010 (when paper reprints ceased). This allows you to identify the reprint you need if the online historical versions don’t go back far enough. See also Reprinted Acts held by the State Library of NSW.

Repealed New South Wales Acts

NSW Legislation	Coverage: Acts repealed from 1 January 2002 onwards, plus selected Acts repealed prior to this date. Browse by title in the ‘browse repealed’ section (underneath the ‘browse in force’ section). Once you have selected the relevant letter of the alphabet, you can type key words from the Act title in the ‘limit list to titles containing…’ box. This saves scrolling through a large number of Acts. Use the ‘search‘ tab if you need to search the full text of Acts – in the ‘what do you want to search’ section, change the default from’ in force’ Acts and Regulations to repealed Acts. HTML versions of these Acts are authorised (they are somewhat paradoxically contained in the ‘in force’ database). Database provided by NSW Parliamentary Counsel’s Office.
Lawlex	Coverage: Acts repealed from 1 January 2002 onwards, plus selected Acts repealed prior to this date (Lawlex provides another way to access the NSW Legislation website) Type in the name of the Act in the ‘keywords’ field and the year in the ‘year from’ field. Set the jurisdiction to ‘NSW’ and the document type to ‘principal Act’. Select ‘include repealed / failed legislation’. Each Act on Lawlex has a ‘home page’ – click on the title to go to the Act on the NSW Legislation website.
AustLII	Coverage: Acts repealed from 1 July 2002 onwards. Browse by title. You can also use the ‘name search’ to search Act titles. Use ‘database search’ to run a full text search.
NSW Legislation tables	Coverage: Acts repealed from 1824 onwards. Click on ‘Repealed NSW Acts’ in the ‘cumulative annual tables’ section, then enter the date range you require. This will generate a list of all Acts repealed in that date range. Click on the Act title to be taken to the last version of the Act prior to repeal (or the Act as passed if a consolidated version is not available). If you are trying to find out when a particular Act was repealed, another method is to use the ‘NSW Acts since 1824‘ table in the ‘Catalogue of Acts’ section. Enter the date range 1 Jan to 31 Dec for the year the Act was passed and click ‘generate table’. This will generate a list of all Acts passed in that period. Scroll down to find the relevant Act – details of the repeal will be listed. The website also provides a static table of all Acts repealed between 1986 and 2012.

New South Wales legislation – tables & guides

NSW Legislation

‘Public Acts in Force‘: generate the table as at any date on or after 28/9/1824. This will provide a list of all Acts in force on that date. Acts are hyperlinked to the relevant historical version (if available on the site).
‘Private Acts in Force‘: as for the table above, but for any date on or after 24/8/1832.
‘Applied Laws in Force‘: generate a table of laws made in other jurisdictions which are applied as if they were laws of NSW. Table can be generated for any date on or after 28/9/1824.
Commencement tables: generate a table of Acts which commenced on a particular date (or in a particular date range) on or after 1/1/1960.
Uncommenced Acts: generate a table of Acts which have not commenced or have provisions which have not commenced. The table can only be generated for the current day (i.e. not point-in-time).
NSW Acts since 1824: generate a table of Acts passed within a particular date range from 28/9/1824 to the present. The Acts in the table are hyperlinked to the ‘as passed’ version of the Act.
Acts repealed 1986 – July 2012 listed alphabetically
Table of reprinted Acts 1972-2010 Publishing of paper reprints ceased at the end of 2010.
Legislation in Force: archive from 1990-2012. The tables in this publication (e.g. Public Acts in Force) have been replaced by interactive tables and can now be generated as at a particular date, as described above.
Monthly Acts tables: archive from 1990-2012. Gives details of Bills introduced, Acts passed, amended or repealed, assent dates for Acts, proclamations to commence Acts and Paper Reprints of Acts. Replaced by interactive tables as described above.

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