Wikisource:WikiProject NZ Law

Goals

• Make both current and historical legislation easily accessible. It should be easy to find specific legislation, as well as related legal documentation, such as Bills, Regulations, and Hansard that are related to any Acts.
• Through the use of templates, allow for easy formatting of legislation to make sure adding new legislation is as easy as possible, to encourage new contributors to join the project.
• Find a balance between consistent formatting for an easier user experience, and ensuring formatting stays true to the original legislation. The formatting of Acts in New Zealand has changed a number of times across the years.
• Wikisource should never aim to be the official source of current, up to date legislation. There's no way for us to guarantee that we will always have the latest amendments incorporated. The use of this website lies in keeping a record of legislative documents through history.

Portal

Law of New Zealand

Aiming to be a portal to all legal documents related to New Zealand.

Completed

Acts

• Destitute Persons Act 1846
• Pensions Act 1849
• Pensions Act 1856
• Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Act 2015

Work in Progress

Volumes

• Index:The Ordinances of the Legislative Council of New Zealand and of the Legislative Council of the Province of New Munster - From 4. Victoriæ to 16. Victoriæ Inclusive, 1841 to 1853.pdf
• Index:Statutes of New Zealand - 1854 to 1860.pdf

Acts

Proofread, need validation

• New Zealand Institute Act 1867
• New Zealand Institute Act 1903
• New Zealand Institute Amendment Act 1930
• Royal Society of New Zealand Act 1933
• Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Act 1964
• Royal Society of New Zealand Act 1965
• Royal Society of New Zealand Act 1997

• Social Security Act 2018*

* On hold, see discussion page.

Bills

• Index:Subordinate Legislation Confirmation Bill (Version 11).pdf

Copyright Notes

Under section 27 of the Copyright Act 1994 (1994 No 143), no copyright exists in any introduced Bill, any Act, any regulations, bylaws, parliamentary debates, reports of select committees, judgements of any court/tribunal, or reports of commissions/inquiries.

In discussions with the Parliamentary Counsel Office, who administer and maintain legislation, they confirm all their documents are in the public domain, however recommend that legislation.govt.nz is linked to as an official source.

Licences

• PD-NZGov

To-do

Transcription

Develop faster method for formatting large Acts. The Social Security Act 2018 is a document with 460 sections and 12 schedules, and there are 15 different versions of this.

Acts held on Legislation.govt.nz will be easier as they are machine readable and have XML files to parse.

Older acts only held on the NZ Legal Information Institute will be more difficult as the OCR has not been validated.

Versions

Create self-updating versions pages so that when a new version of large documents like Social Security Act 2018 are uploaded, all pages do not need updating.

Templates

TOC

{{LinkedTOC row 1-1-1}} {{LinkedTOC row 1-c-1}}

Act structure

{{Law-pAct-t}}

{{Law/pAct/s/start}} {{Law/pAct/s/end}}

{{Law/pAct/s/heading}}

{{Law/pAct/s/notes}}

{{Law/pAct/subs/start}} {{Law/pAct/subs/end}}

{{Law/pAct/para/start}} {{Law/pAct/para/end}}

{{Law/pAct/subpara/start}} {{Law/pAct/subpara/end}}

{{Law/pAct/text}}

{{Law/pAct/cross-h}}

Misc

{{Pagelink}}

External Links

• Legislation.govt.nz - All current and recent laws
• NZ Legal Information Institute - Scans of historical laws
• New Zealand Law Style Guide by the Law Foundation
• Legislation Manual by the New Zealand Law Commission
• AU Legal Information Institute - NSW Acts as enacted impacted NZ e.g. New Zealand Customs Duties Act 1840