What are Acts/Ordinances/Statutes?
Acts or Statutes are terms used for laws passed by Parliaments; Ordinances was the term previously used for laws passed by subordinate legislatures, especially by the ACT and Northern Territory legislatures before self-government.
The publication of acts differs somewhat from state to state, but generally the arrangement is as follows:
- Loose Acts and amendments to Acts are received first as single pamphlets which are filed by act number. Cumulated Acts Tables for the current year, giving act numbers and details of acts passed, are issued frequently and can be found with most runs of single acts of a jurisdiction. Arrangement is by the title of the act.
- Bound volumes. Acts and amendments for the current year are published annually in bound volumes, arranged by Act number.
- Single pamphlet consolidations or reprinted Acts. An Act may be amended not only by an amending Act of the same name but also by other Acts, often referring only to certain sections of an Act. Because of this complexity, consolidations of single Acts are issued from time to time in pamphlet form.
- Multi-volume bound consolidations. The Commonwealth and most states have published multi-volume consolidations of all Acts in force at a certain time, but this practice is now outdated
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