What it does
The Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals (New South Wales) Act 1994 is a classic “application” or “mirror” statute. Its central operative provisions are ss 5 and 6. Section 5 provides that the Code set out in the Schedule to the Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Code Act 1994 (Cth) “applies as a law of New South Wales” and “may be cited as the Agvet Code of New South Wales”. Section 6 does the same for the regulations made under s 6 of the Commonwealth Code Act, which become the Agvet Regulations of New South Wales.
The Act does not itself create a discrete NSW regulatory regime. Instead it stitches the national scheme into the NSW legal fabric so that the APVMA’s decisions on active-constituent approval, product registration, permits, licences and manufacturing principles have direct legal effect in the State. Part 2 supplies the interpretive scaffolding: s 7(2) applies the Acts Interpretation Act 1901 (Cth) (as amended from time to time) to the Agvet Code and Regulations in NSW, while expressly excluding the Interpretation Act 1987 (NSW) (s 7(4)). This ensures that Commonwealth interpretive rules govern the meaning of terms such as “approved active constituent”, “registered chemical product” and “permit”.
Part 3 (ss 9–10) is a comity provision. It deems references in NSW instruments to “the Agvet Codes” or “the Agvet Regulations” to include both the NSW version and the corresponding versions in every other participating jurisdiction. The stated object in s 10(1) is to allow the Agvet Code of NSW to operate “as if that Code, together with the Agvet Code of each other jurisdiction, constituted a single national Agvet Code applying throughout Australia”. This is the legislative machinery that gives practical effect to the 1992–94 intergovernmental agreement that replaced the previous patchwork of State registration systems.