LibGuides: Researching Legislation: Bills & Extrinsic Materials

Bills and Extrinsic Materials

An Act starts out as a Bill prepared by the Office of Parliamentary Counsel. When introduced to Parliament, it may be accompanied by an explanatory document summarising the new law and explaining the Bill clause by clause. This document may be known as an Explanatory Memorandum or Explanatory Statement.

Parliamentary libraries also produce useful information digests which provide the purpose and background of newly introduced Bills. For example, Bills Digests prepared by the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library and Alert Digests produced by the Victorian Parliamentary Library.

The explanatory memorandum and the second reading speech (included in Hansard) are forms of extrinsic materials which aid in understanding the purpose of the new proposed law. For Victoria Acts this is set out in section 35 of the Interpretation of Legislation Act 1984 (Vic). For Commonwealth Acts this is set out in section 15AB of the Acts Interpretation Act 1901 (Cth). Statements of Compatibility made under the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 (Vic), s 28 and the Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Act 2011 (Cth), s 8 can also be treated as forms of extrinsic materials.

Official versions of Bills and Explanatory Memoranda

The following Commonwealth, State and Territory government sites contain the official versions of each jurisdiction's parliamentary information.

The free AustLII website contains unofficial versions of current bills and explanatory memoranda and bills digests, and historical official versions of some jurisdictions.

Bills and Explanatory Memoranda

Searching for Commonwealth Bills and Extrinsic Materials

When you are researching Commonwealth Bills, the Parliament of Australia website has a free access database called ParlInfo. This database contains official versions of Bills, extrinsic materials, Hansard and Parliamentary reports.

Start at the Parliament of Australia website.
Select ParlInfo from the top navigation bar.
Select Advanced Search/Browse
Enter your keywords into the Search Fields. In this example we are going to look for the Bill and extrinsic materials for the National Anti-Corruption Commission Act 2022 (Cth)

In the Search for box, type in a few keywords from the title of the Bill. Change the Content drop down to Title. In the Using field change the default to all of these words.
Scroll down to Bills and Legislation, and depending on the date of the Bill, select Current or Previous Parliaments. In this example we have ticked Bills of the Current Parliament.
Click on Search. On the results screen, look for the result with [Bill Homepage] next to the title of the Bill as this contains all the material relating to that Bill. If there are a lot of results, you can use the limits on the left of the screen to refine your list.
Click on the title of the Bill to view the core document homepage for the Bill. On this page you will find some key information about the Bill and can navigate to relevant content via the top menu.

Under the Text of Bill section you will find downloadable formats of the Bill and the explanatory memorandum (including any proposed amendments). Further down the page are links to the Minister’s speech in Hansard, Bills digest and committee reports.

Tip

For guidance on searching this website visit the Parlinfo Advanced Search Tips.

Where do you find pre 1982 Commonwealth Explanatory Memoranda or Explanatory Statements?

From 1901 to 1982 not all Commonwealth Bills had an accompanying Explanatory Memorandum. The Parliamentary Library has produced an Index to Explanatory Memoranda 1901-1982.

There is also useful information on the Was there an EM? webpage. Under section 15AB of the Acts Interpretation Act 1901 (Cth), explanatory memorandum are considered as extrinsic materials when researching the interpretative process of legislation.