Overview

OPC’s second purpose is “to ensure Commonwealth laws and instruments are freely available and accessible to everyone by publishing those laws and instruments on the Federal Register of Legislation website”.

The Publications group achieves this purpose by:

• managing the Legislation Register;
• registering legislative instruments and lodging them for tabling in the Parliament;
• preparing compilations and information relating to Commonwealth laws;
• publishing Commonwealth legislation and legislative information;
• publishing the Government Notices Gazette;
• proofreading and editorial checking of OPC drafted legislation; and
• developing and operating the whole-of-government Legislation Register website (www.legislation.gov.au).

OPC has met all performance targets for this purpose in 2018-2019.

New legislative and notifiable instruments and gazette notices lodged for registration were registered promptly on the Legislation Register.

100% of legislative and notifiable instruments and gazette notices were registered on a specific date as required by lodging entities, meeting the performance target of 100%.

100% of other legislative and notifiable instruments and gazette notices were registered no later than 2 business days after lodgement, exceeding the performance target of 98%.

New Acts were registered promptly on the Legislation Register.

100% of Acts were registered on the Legislation Register no later than 2 working days after receipt of notification of Royal Assent, exceeding the performance target of 98%.

Act and legislative and notifiable instrument compilations were registered promptly on the Legislation Register in accordance with statutory requirements.

90% of Act and legislative and notifiable instrument compilations required to be prepared by OPC were registered on the Legislation Register 28 days after commencement of the prospective amendments, meeting the performance target.

Staffing

Staff have continued to be trained in all the areas of responsibility within the Publications group to allow resources to be better utilised and directed during peak periods.

The Legislation Act and Legislation Register

OPC charges an annual fee for standard Legislation Register services based on each agency's proportion of usage of the Legislation Register. Fees for some agencies have declined over the last 5 years as they continue to change their registration practices. The Legislation Register fees continue to be consistent with the Australian Government Cost Recovery Guidelines and attribute costs that recognise the whole-of-life cost (including IT infrastructure costs) in publishing legislation.

The demand for current versions of legislation continues to be met by free online public access to the Legislation Register. Commercially printed copies of versions, if required, can be ordered online using the print-on-demand function on the Legislation Register.

Work continues on the project to redevelop the Legislation Register. This project is expected to run for a number of years.

The Legislation Amendment (Sunsetting Review and Other Measures) Act 2018 was assented to on 24 August 2018.

Some of the changes made by this Act were mentioned earlier. Other changes made include:

• a change in the rules about the automatic repeal of disallowable legislative instruments under Division 1 of Part 3 of Chapter 3 of the Legislation Act so that automatic repeal does not operate before the end of the instrument’s disallowance period;
• a new definition of sitting day in the Acts Interpretation Act 1901;
• under section 15D of the Legislation Act, corrections are now known (as they were until 2015) as rectifications;
• a new requirement for re-tabling as well as additional disallowance periods for any rectified disallowable legislative instruments where the original version of the instrument was tabled before the rectification occurred; and
• if an instrument is rectified because the originally registered instrument is not the same as the instrument as made then it must be re-tabled. If the originally tabled instrument has already been disallowed in full by a House of Parliament then there is no new disallowance period. In all other cases, a re-tabled rectified disallowable legislative instrument will be subject to a new disallowance period.

Data acquisition

The Publications group has continued to undertake data acquisition projects to make difficult-to-find historical legislative material more accessible.

These projects are complex and time consuming and are worked on by staff alongside other core business functions.

The Publications Group is currently focussing on:

• preparing versions of as made legislation from 1901 in multiple formats;
• publishing House of Representatives Bills, explanatory memoranda and associated documents from 1901; and
• back-capturing historical metadata on the Legislation Register to make it consistent with current standards and therefore easier to search and retrieve information about older legislation.

Publishing statistics

The volume of work in 2018-2019, as reflected in the publishing statistics, was similar in most areas to the volume of work in 2017-2018. The exceptions were a noticeable increase in 2018-2019 in the number of OPC prepared instrument compilations prepared on a user-pays basis, and a decrease in the number of agency prepared instrument compilations registered on behalf of agencies.

Statistics—Publishing

Note: The above statistics relate only to new items. They do not include backcaptured or republished historical documents.

Statistics—Legislative (LIs) and Notifiable (NIs) instruments registered and repealed

Statistics—Legislation Register website

Note: Total unique visits is the number of unduplicated (counted only once) visitors. Total page views is the total number of pages viewed. For page views, repeated views of a single page are counted.