When undertaking legislative legal research, it may be important to know what the law in force was on a specific date. This is often known as ‘point-in-time' or legislative history research. For example, for auditing purposes you may need to check which tax rates applied at a certain date in the past, or what the tax law was before the introduction of GST.
Note: You may need to use a mixture of print and online resources to find legislation from a particular point in time. For more information about the format of historical compilation of Acts see Formats of Acts.
The Federal Register of Legislation and Victorian Legislation websites include historical superseded compilations of official versions of Acts. (A compilation becomes superseded each time the Act is amended.)
Click on the plus (+) icons below to find historical Acts for Commonwealth and Victorian legislation.
Compilations will be listed in reverse date order. Scroll through the list. Refer to the Effective Date column to navigate to a relevant compilation of the Act. For example, if you require a version of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) as it was in force on 2 July 2023, you will need to refer to compilation number C122.
See the Federal Register of Legislation Help and Resources page for more search information.
If you require versions of Victorian Acts prior to 1995 the AustLII website has a database for Historical Victorian Acts from 1885-1995.