Legislative Databases Help

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The AustLII legislation databases include hypertext links to most relevant material. These generally include the following:

references to sections, parts and schedules within the current Act;
references to definitions within the current Act;
references to other Acts; and
references to sections in other Acts.

Each section is preceeded by a number of "buttons". The meaning of these is as follows:

AustLII Logo - clicking on the AustLII Logo will take you back to the AustLII home page.
[Index] - jumps you to the home page for the current database. You normally do this, if you want to select a different Act.
[Table] - takes you to the entry of the current item in the Act's table of contents. This is useful if you want to go to a different section in the current Act, or if you just want to get an idea of where the current section sits within the Act.
[Search] - lets you perform a free text search over the entire AustLII database or parts of it.
[Notes] - displays notes associated with the current Act. The notes generally contain amendment histories and other useful information.
[Noteup] - searches for all materials which refer to the current section. This will display all other Acts and cases which refer to this section.
[Previous] - takes you to the preceeding section. This is useful for "stepping back" through an Act.
[Next] - takes you to the next section in the Act
[Download] - prints a complete copy of the current Act. This is displayed as simple ascii text, so that you can save a complete copy of an Act to disk, or print it out.
[Help] - gives you this page

Acts and regulations are "marked up" on a massively automated basis. We are constantly improving this process to add functionality. If you have suggestions, these are more than welcome. Please bear in mind that the mark up process is essentially heuristic in nature - that is, it is designed to make the occassional mistake. We can't do much about acontextual links which depend on an understanding of natural (or even legal!) language. If you think that you can suggest a general approach to better taking into account the salient features which are inherent to most legislation, please send us feedback.