{"id":"C2004A01837","name":"Ordinances and Regulations (Notification) Act 1978","slug":"ordinances-and-regulations-notification-act-1978","collection":"act","jurisdiction":"commonwealth","status":"in_force","isInForce":true,"actNumber":"38 of 1978","makingDate":null,"administeringDepartment":null,"currentVersion":{"id":6737,"registerId":"commonwealth-C2004A01837-current","compilationNumber":null,"startDate":"2026-03-30","status":"InForce","reasons":null,"registeredAt":null},"sections":[{"sectionNumber":"1","sectionType":"section","heading":"Ordinances and Regulations (Notification) Act 1978","content":"ORDINANCES AND REGULATIONS (NOTIFICATION) ACT 1978\n\nNo. 38 of 1978\n\nAn Act relating to the notification of the making of certain Ordinances, regulations and other instruments.\n\nBE IT ENACTED by the Queen, and the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Australia, as follows:\n\nShort title\n\n1. This Act may be cited as the Ordinances and Regulations (Notification) Act 1978.\n\nCommencement\n\n2. This Act shall come into operation on the day on which it receives the Royal Assent.\n\nNotification of Ordinances, regulations, &c.\n\n3. (1) Where—\n\n(a) before the commencement of this Act, there was published in the Gazette a form of words being, purporting to be, or apparently intended to be—\n\n(i) a notice or notification of a statutory instrument having been made, or of the making of, with respect to the making of, or referring to the making of, a statutory instrument; and\n\n(ii) a notice or notification of, with respect to, or referring to, a place or places where copies of the statutory instrument could be purchased; and\n\n(b) copies of the statutory instrument were not, or have not been, available for purchase at that place, or at one or more of those places, at the time of publication of those words, or at some later time (whether on the date of publication of those words or on a later date),\n\nthe fact that copies of the statutory instrument were not, or have not been, so available for purchase shall not be taken to constitute, or to have at any time constituted, a failure to comply with a provision of any law of the Commonwealth or of the Australian Capital Territory with respect to the publication or notification of the statutory instrument in the Gazette.\n\n(2) A reference in sub-section (1) to a statutory instrument shall be read as a reference to—\n\n(a) an Ordinance made under the Seat of Government (Administration) Act 1910 or any regulations, rules, by-laws or other instrument made under such an Ordinance; or\n\n(b) any regulations, rules, by-laws or other instrument to which the Statutory Rules Publication Act 1903 applies or applied, whether of its own force or by virtue of another Act.\n\nApplication of Act in relation to certain proceedings\n\n4. Where proceedings for an offence against the Banking (Foreign Exchange) Regulations instituted before 25 May 1978 had not been finally disposed of before that date, section 3 does not apply in relation to those Regulations for the purposes of those proceedings but does apply in relation to those Regulations for the purposes of any other proceedings and for all other purposes.\n\n![](image.001.png)","sortOrder":0}],"analysis":{"kimi_summary":{"content_quality":"ok","complexity_score":3,"scope_assessment":{"changed":false,"description":"The legislation remains tightly focused on its original purpose: remedying specific technical defects in the publication and notification of statutory instruments. It has not expanded beyond this narrow, retrospective validation function."},"complexity_factors":["Dense, nested conditional language in section 3(1) with multiple sub-paragraphs (a)(i), (a)(ii), and (b) creating a complex logical test","Retroactive application — the Act validates past actions that might otherwise have been legally defective","Cross-references to three other Acts: Seat of Government (Administration) Act 1910, Statutory Rules Publication Act 1903, and Banking (Foreign Exchange) Regulations","Defined term \"statutory instrument\" with its own expansion in section 3(2) covering two distinct categories of instruments","Specific carve-out in section 4 creating a limited exception for ongoing proceedings, adding conditional logic"],"plain_english_summary":"**What this law does:**\n\nThis is a short, technical \"fix-it\" law from 1978 that cleans up a specific legal problem about how government rules and regulations were published.\n\n**The problem it solved:**\n\nBack in the day, when the government made new rules (called \"statutory instruments\" — things like regulations, ordinances, and by-laws), they had to publish a notice in the *Gazette* (the official government newspaper). This notice had to tell people where they could buy copies of the actual rules.\n\nSometimes, the Gazette notice said copies were available at certain places, but when people went there, the copies weren't actually available. This created a legal risk — technically, the government might have failed to properly \"notify\" the public, which could make the rules invalid or create problems in court.\n\n**What the law says:**\n\n* **Section 3:** If a Gazette notice was published *before* this Act started, saying copies were available somewhere, but they actually weren't available at that place (or stopped being available), **that doesn't count as a legal failure**. The rules are still valid. The government is off the hook for this specific technical slip-up.\n\n* **Section 4:** There's one exception. If someone was already being prosecuted under the *Banking (Foreign Exchange) Regulations* before 25 May 1978, this fix doesn't help the government in that specific court case. But it does apply everywhere else.\n\n**Who it affects:**\n\nMainly government lawyers and archivists. It protects the validity of historical regulations and ordinances from the 1970s and earlier, ensuring that technical publishing glitches don't invalidate important laws.\n\n**Why it matters:**\n\nWithout this law, anyone could have challenged government regulations on the technicality that \"the Gazette said I could buy a copy at the Post Office, but they were out of stock.\" This prevents legal chaos over bureaucratic paperwork errors."},"flash_summary_failed":{"failed":true,"reason":"A positive credit balance is required for all requests, including BYOK, so fallback providers remain available. Add credits at https://vercel.com/d?to=%2F%5Bteam%5D%2F%7E%2Fai%3Fmodal%3Dtop-up to continue.","source":"analysis-cron"},"issue_detection":{"absurdities":[{"type":"retroactive_impossibility","section":"Section 3(1)(b)","severity":"medium","reasoning":"The phrase 'have not been' (present perfect) extends the curative operation of s3(1) to non-availability at any point up to and including the present. This means the section is not merely curing a historical defect but is also operating prospectively to excuse ongoing non-availability of copies — all while being framed as a retrospective fix. A provision cannot logically be both a cure for a past breach and a blanket licence for an open-ended future failure of the same kind. The retroactive framing ('shall not be taken to have at any time constituted') sits in deep tension with the continuing/prospective scope of 'have not been'.","confidence":0.75,"description":"The provision purports to cure a publication failure — copies not being available for purchase — by declaring that the failure 'shall not be taken to constitute, or to have at any time constituted, a failure to comply'. However, it does so by reference to an event (copies not being available) that is defined in part by something that may still be ongoing ('were not, or have not been, so available'), meaning the curative effect applies to a continuing breach that may never end. The Act retroactively legalises an ongoing non-compliance in perpetuity, including future instances of non-availability."},{"type":"other","section":"Section 3(1)","severity":"medium","reasoning":"The entire purpose of a Gazette notification of where to purchase a statutory instrument is to enable access to the law. Declaring that the absence of the instrument at the stated location does not constitute a publication failure is logically equivalent to saying a false statement in the Gazette is as good as a true one for the purposes of legal notification. This undermines the very rationale of the requirement being 'complied with'.","confidence":0.8,"description":"The section cures non-compliance with publication requirements by declaring that non-availability of copies 'shall not be taken to constitute a failure to comply with a provision of any law'. But the very notification requirement being excused exists to ensure the public can access the law. A notice telling the public where to buy a document, when the document was never actually available there, is not a notice at all — it is misinformation. The Act legalises the legal fiction that a false public notice constitutes valid notification."},{"type":"self_contradicting","section":"Section 4","severity":"high","reasoning":"The Banking (Foreign Exchange) Regulations are either validly notified or they are not. Section 4 creates a Schrödinger's Regulation: for the purposes of the specific pre-25 May 1978 proceedings, the notification defect is uncured (s3 does not apply), but for every other purpose the defect is cured (s3 does apply). The same instrument has a bifurcated legal status depending solely on which courtroom you are standing in. This is not merely a procedural carve-out — it goes to the substantive validity of the regulations as a source of criminal liability.","confidence":0.85,"description":"Section 4 creates a carve-out for proceedings for offences against the Banking (Foreign Exchange) Regulations that were instituted before 25 May 1978 and not finally disposed of by that date. The provision says s3 'does not apply' for those proceedings but 'does apply for any other proceedings and for all other purposes'. However, if s3 does not apply in those proceedings, the underlying publication defect of those Regulations is live — meaning the Regulations themselves may be of uncertain validity. A person could thus be prosecuted under regulations whose legal status depends on which proceedings are being examined at any given moment, creating a situation where the same regulations are simultaneously valid and potentially invalid."}],"contradictions":[{"severity":"high","section_a":"Section 3(1)","section_b":"Section 4","confidence":0.9,"description":"Section 3(1) provides a blanket, unconditional cure for all publication/notification failures for all statutory instruments within scope, declaring that non-availability of copies 'shall not be taken to constitute... a failure to comply' for any purpose. Section 4 then directly negates this universal cure for a specific instrument (the Banking (Foreign Exchange) Regulations) in relation to specific proceedings, meaning s3's declared universality is false on the face of the same Act."},{"severity":"medium","section_a":"Section 3(1)(a)(ii)","section_b":"Section 3(1)(b)","confidence":0.7,"description":"Section 3(1)(a)(ii) requires that the Gazette notice referred to 'a place or places where copies of the statutory instrument could be purchased' — the word 'could' implies actual availability at those places. Section 3(1)(b) then cures the situation where copies were not available at those very places. The precondition in (a)(ii) is therefore contradicted by (b): (a)(ii) describes a notice saying copies could be purchased somewhere, while (b) addresses the scenario where they in fact could not be. The section thus applies its cure to a situation that technically falls outside its own triggering condition."}]},"summary":{"complexity_score":3,"scope_assessment":{"changed":false,"description":"This Act is a narrow, single-purpose curative instrument. It has a tightly defined original intent — to validate past notification failures for certain Commonwealth and ACT statutory instruments — and the text does not deviate from or expand beyond that purpose. The carve-out in section 4 for Banking (Foreign Exchange) Regulations proceedings is consistent with the original intent, not an expansion of it. There is no evidence of scope creep."},"complexity_factors":["Very short Act — only 4 operative sections","Retrospective (backward-looking) operation adds a layer of conceptual complexity","Section 3(1) contains multi-limbed conditional logic (paragraphs (a)(i), (a)(ii), and (b) must all be satisfied)","Section 3(2) contains two definitional sub-categories that require cross-referencing two other Acts (Seat of Government (Administration) Act 1910 and Statutory Rules Publication Act 1903)","Section 4 contains a targeted carve-out for specific regulations and specific proceedings, requiring readers to apply a date-based conditional test","Archaic legislative drafting style (e.g. 'Be it enacted by the Queen', use of '&c.', 'sub-section') may confuse modern readers","Relatively narrow subject matter limits overall complexity despite the conditional structure"],"plain_english_summary":"## Ordinances and Regulations (Notification) Act 1978\n\n**What this Act does in plain English**\n\nThis is a short, highly specific piece of \"fix-up\" legislation — sometimes called a **curative Act** — designed to patch a legal problem that arose from a paperwork technicality in how certain laws were notified to the public.\n\n**The problem it was solving**\n\nUnder Australian law, when the government makes a regulation, ordinance, or similar rule (collectively called **statutory instruments** — meaning laws made by the executive government rather than Parliament), it must formally notify the public by publishing a notice in the **Commonwealth Gazette** (the official government newspaper). That notice typically had to tell people where they could go to *buy a copy* of the instrument.\n\nThe problem: in some cases, the Gazette notice said copies were available for purchase at certain places — but they actually weren't available there, either at the time of publication or later. Technically, this meant the government had *failed to properly notify* the public, which could have made those laws invalid or unenforceable.\n\n**What the Act does about it**\n\n- It declares, retrospectively (going back in time before the Act itself), that the failure to have copies physically available for purchase **does not count** as a failure to comply with notification requirements.\n- In other words, it \"cures\" or validates those past notifications, so that the laws in question remain legally effective even though the copies weren't actually available to buy.\n\n**Which laws are covered?**\n\nThe fix applies to two categories of statutory instruments:\n- **Ordinances** made under the *Seat of Government (Administration) Act 1910* (which governed the ACT before self-government), and anything made under those Ordinances (regulations, rules, by-laws, etc.)\n- **Regulations, rules, by-laws and other instruments** covered by the *Statutory Rules Publication Act 1903* — essentially, most Commonwealth delegated legislation of that era\n\n**The one important exception**\n\nThere is a carve-out for the **Banking (Foreign Exchange) Regulations** specifically. If someone had already been charged with an offence under those Regulations *before 25 May 1978*, and that case hadn't been finalised yet, this Act's cure does **not** apply to their case. This protects defendants who were already in court — they could still argue the notification was defective. However, for any *other* legal purposes (including future cases), the Banking (Foreign Exchange) Regulations are also cured.\n\n**Who does this affect?**\n\n- Primarily, it affects the **legal validity of a large number of Commonwealth and ACT laws** made before 1978 — protecting the government and anyone who relied on those laws being valid.\n- It also protects individuals or businesses whose rights or obligations depended on those laws being enforceable.\n- The carve-out specifically protects **defendants in pending Banking (Foreign Exchange) Regulations prosecutions** as at 25 May 1978."}},"importantCases":[],"_links":{"self":"/api/acts/ordinances-and-regulations-notification-act-1978","history":"/api/acts/ordinances-and-regulations-notification-act-1978/history","analysis":"/api/acts/ordinances-and-regulations-notification-act-1978/analysis","conflicts":"/api/acts/ordinances-and-regulations-notification-act-1978/conflicts","importantCases":"/api/acts/ordinances-and-regulations-notification-act-1978/important-cases","documents":"/api/acts/ordinances-and-regulations-notification-act-1978/documents"}}