Historical Acts Available Online

Historical Acts as passed by Parliament and the earlier Legislative Council, are now available online going right back to 1841.

The Office of the Clerk said the ``New Zealand Acts 1841–2007 As-Enacted Collection’’ had been put together by the Parliamentary Counsel Office by scanning original printed volumes to produce facsimiles in PDF format. The files have also been through an OCR (optical character recognition) process, which makes the text searchable.

All Acts from between 1841 and 2007 are included in the collection, whether or not they have been repealed.

They are in their original form, so do not include any later amendments.

For those interested the legislation shows an insight into New Zealand’s history and changing political and social landscape.

One of the earliest laws in 1841 is the Distillation Act which banned liquor being distilled by anyone except authorised persons for medicinal purposes, while a 100 year old law -- The Opium Amendment Act 1910 – lays out who may sell and possess opium and in what amounts.

Some old Acts show that issues which continue to take up Parliament’s time were problems long ago, with the Dog Nuisance Act 1849 requiring owners to register dogs and laying out heavy fines for owners of nuisance and unregistered dogs.

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