Commonwealth government publications

Consolidations

A consolidation occurs when all current legislation and statutory instruments:

  • have any necessary updates or corrections made
  • have any obsolete or unnecessary parts removed
  • are reintroduced to parliament and assented to again.

This makes the newly printed set of the legislation much easier to read and understand!

The consolidations also include schedules (list of all changes made to the legislation since it was introduced). This makes them very useful when tracing the history of a pre-1973 act.

This is a large undertaking, so consolidations do not occur often. The latest multi-volume consolidation was published in 1973. Previous consolidations occured in 1950, 1935 and 1911.

Printed