The New Zealand Legislation website (legislation.govt.nz) is now an official source of legislation.
Previously, only printed legislation from the Parliamentary Counsel Office or the government was official. Hard copy legislation dates quickly and could be expensive and difficult to use.
Attorney-General Chris Finlayson describes the site as an important development that puts official up-to-date legislation in the hands of New Zealanders at no cost.
The Parliamentary Counsel Office has confirmed the accuracy of the legislative database. Translated to numbers of pages, it involved detailed checking of around 85,000 pages.
“This has restored the government’s intellectual property in New Zealand legislation and has now made it freely available for all to access and reuse,” Finlayson says.
The change is a result of the Legislation Act 2012, which updates and modernises the publication of legislation.