Previous versions of legislation are available on this website
Previous versions of Acts and PCO-published secondary legislation are included on this website. This means you can see the law that was in force on a specific date. Previous versions of Bills are also available.
Find previous versions of an Act, secondary legislation, or Bill by navigating to it, and then looking under its Versions tab. The number of versions available is shown in brackets on the Versions tab.
The practice of publishing consolidations each time PCO-published legislation is amended began in 2008. That means that for all PCO-published legislation, you will find a 2008 version or an “as-made” version for all legislation enacted or made after 2008, and a consolidation showing the changes made to that legislation until it is repealed or revoked.
The PCO is also progressively scanning and converting versions of legislation that were first published under the predecessors to the Legislation Act 2019 prior to 2008, and including these in the collection on this website as versions of legislation.
The work to add “as-enacted” versions of all New Zealand Acts to this website is almost complete. Over time, the PCO will be adding reprints and other consolidations of Acts that were published by the PCO and its predecessors (for example, the Reprinted Statutes of New Zealand series) and the Statutory Regulations series (which includes “as made” PCO-published secondary legislation and some reprints).
How to locate and read as-enacted versions of Acts
To locate and read the as-enacted version of an Act, navigate to the Act and open its Versions tab. Its as-enacted version is the earliest version and is labelled “as enacted”.
As-enacted versions of Acts enacted before 2008
As-enacted versions of Acts enacted before 2008 were converted from scans of the original printed annual bound volumes of Acts. You can download both a PDF of the converted Act's text and a PDF of the scan of the original Act.
The original scan is an official document. Please note that the web page version and the converted PDF have not in general been checked against the original scan and may contain conversion errors. Please refer to the original official scan if in doubt.
If you find differences between official and converted versions, please feel free to contact us with details. We will record these differences and reconcile them when we have resources available.
Amendment legislation may be available on this website
All amendment Acts are provided on this website.
Amendment PCO-published secondary legislation made from 2008 onwards is available, with some earlier PCO-published amendment secondary legislation also available.
Secondary legislation as-made or revoked before certain dates may be incomplete or unavailable on this website
All PCO-published secondary legislation current from 2008 is available on this website. PCO-published secondary legislation made and then revoked before this date may not be available.
For Acts repealed before 28 October 2021, the PCO-published secondary legislation made under them and listed under their secondary legislation tab is likely to be incomplete.