A bill is a proposed law. See ‘how a law is made‘ for information on how bills are considered and passed by the Victorian Parliament.
Sources of Victorian Bills
| Victorian Legislation & Parliamentary Documents |
- Coverage: 1996-
- Click on ‘Parliamentary Documents’, then click on ‘Bills’.
- The default listing is bills currently before Parliament. Bills are listed alphabetically – click on the title to access the record for the bill, which includes the full text of the bill, the explanatory memorandum and details of the bill’s passage through Parliament. The search box at the top of the screen searches only current bills.
- For older bills, use the Archive: click on the relevant session (some years are divided into ‘Spring’ and ‘Autumn’), then click on the word ‘Bill’. All of the bills for that session will be displayed alphabetically. Click on the bill title to access the record for the bill, which includes the full text of the bill. From around 2001, the bill record also includes the explanatory memorandum and details of the passage through Parliament.
- To search the full text of all bills, use the search box on the ‘Archive’ page. The search box on the first (default) bills page only searches the current bills.
- Provided by the Victorian Government.
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| Parliament |
- Coverage: full text bills 1996- (links back to the Victorian Legislation & Parliamentary Documents website).
- Divided into ‘Bills this week’, ‘Bills’ (i.e. current bills) and ‘Bills Archive’.
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| AustLII |
- Coverage: 1967- (selected bills only in the earlier years)
- Browse by title or by year.
- Use ‘name search’ to search the titles of bills.
- Use ‘database search’ to search the full text of bills.
- Click on the ‘download’ link once you have located the bill to access versions formatted for printing etc.
- Click on the ‘related items’ link to access the explanatory memorandum (where available on AustLII).
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| Lawlex |
- Coverage: current bills only
- Type in the name of the bill in the ‘keywords’ field and the year in the ‘year from’ field. Set the jurisdiction to ‘VIC’ and the document type to ‘Bill’.
- Each bill on Lawlex has a ‘home page’ – click on the title of the bill to link to the latest version of the bill on the Victorian Legislation & Parliamentary Documents website.
- Note: the subscription version of Lawlex provides a deeper archive of full text bills, information about the progress of bills through Parliament, alerts and more.
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| GovPubs |
- Contains information about print holdings of Victorian bills in the National Library and State / Territory Libraries.
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Information about Victorian Bills
| Victorian Legislation & Parliamentary Documents |
- Bills Status List: current status of all bills before Parliament during the year.
- Most individual bill records also include a ‘status report’, which gives the details of the bill’s passage through Parliament.
- The FAQ page provides information about the different prints of a bill (e.g. introduction print, circulation print), monitoring the progress of a bill, the structure of a bill and more. Click on ‘FAQ’ in the dark blue menu across the top of the screen.
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| Parliament |
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| GovPubs |
- Contains information about various indexes to Victorian bills, along with details of where to find them – some are online, others can be found in hard copy in the National Library and State / Territory Libraries.
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| Victorian Legislation Research Guide: Bills & EMs |
- Includes information about bills and explanatory memoranda, including how to monitor the progress of bills.
- Provided by the University of Melbourne Library.
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Related pages
See also Explanatory Memoranda and Second Reading speeches.
Last updated: 4 March 2014.
