Major Transport Projects Facilitation (Notification) Revocation Regulations 2021

The Regulations exercise a narrow statutory function: revocation of a previous subordinate instrument. The main concepts present in the text and endnotes are the following.

Revocation: The core concept is statutory revocation. Regulation 4 states that the Major Transport Projects Facilitation (Notification) Regulations 2013 are revoked. Revocation here is absolute in form: the 2013 Regulations are taken out of the statute book by this instrument from the stated commencement date. The Revocation Regulations do not, however, state any savings, transitional arrangements or partial continuations; the instrument contains no provision preserving or adapting any provision of the revoked Regulations.

Authorising provision: The instrument records the authorising power for its making in regulation 2, namely section 266 of the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009. The text supplied does not reproduce s 266 itself; the Revocation Regulations simply identify it as the head of power relied on by the Governor in Council.

Commencement and making: The instrument distinguishes the date of making from the date of commencement. The endnotes record the Regulations were made on 30 November 2021 by the Governor in Council and came into operation on 1 December 2021. The gap between making and commencement is one day, as reported.

Sunset: The endnotes state the Revocation Regulations will sunset under the Subordinate Legislation Act 1994, section 5, ten years after the day of making (30 November 2031). That means the revocation instrument itself has a statutory life‑limit imposed by the Subordinate Legislation Act; the endnote records that fact.

Interpretive apparatus: The endnotes incorporate material from the Interpretation of Legislation Act 1984 about style and the legal effect of headings, examples, punctuation and provision numbers in Statutory Rules made on or after 1 January 2001. These are interpretive rules that shape how the text of the Revocation Regulations is to be read but do not add substantive regulatory duties.

No substantive content: The Regulations do not create rights, obligations, offences, administrative procedures or fees. Their sole material effect is the removal of the 2013 Notification Regulations; any legal consequences beyond that follow from the content of the revoked instrument and the parent Act, neither of which are reprinted here.

The Regulations directly affect the legal status of the Major Transport Projects Facilitation (Notification) Regulations 2013 by revoking them. That change in legal status potentially affects the following classes of persons and entities to the extent they were covered by the 2013 Regulations:

• persons, corporations, companies, proponents and agencies who were subject to obligations, processes, notices, or procedural rules set out in the 2013 Notification Regulations;
• decision-makers, officials and administrative bodies that implemented, relied upon, or enforced the 2013 Regulations; and
• third parties whose rights, privileges or administrative entitlements were created, modified or protected by provisions in the 2013 Regulations.

The Revocation Regulations themselves do not identify any particular substantive categories of regulated persons, because they do not reproduce the content of the 2013 Regulations. The factual question of who is affected in practice therefore depends on what the 2013 Regulations contained. The only statutory fact in the instrument is that the 2013 Regulations are revoked as at 1 December 2021 (reg 3 and reg 4).

Who decides: the instrument was made by the Governor in Council under s 266 of the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009 (Endnote 1). The endnote records the instrument was made on 30 November 2021 by the Governor in Council and commenced on 1 December 2021. That identifies the executive decision-maker responsible for the revocation.

Who pays: the Revocation Regulations do not create fees or penalties and therefore do not themselves impose any costs. They remove an existing subordinate instrument; any change in compliance costs for private parties depends on the content of the revoked 2013 Regulations. If the 2013 Regulations imposed compliance costs, those costs cease with their revocation; if the 2013 Regulations conveyed benefits, those benefits cease. The Revocation Regulations do not specify compensation, transitional payments or continuing administrative duties.

Administrative actors: the endnotes show the Subordinate Legislation Act 1994 will apply to the instrument’s sunset, which imposes a time limit on the existence of the revocation instrument itself. The Interpretation of Legislation Act 1984 material in the endnotes determines how the instrument’s form and headings are to be read, which affects officials who must apply or interpret the revocation.

Uncertainty and contingent effect: because the Revocation Regulations do not contain savings or transitional provisions, persons affected will need to examine the 2013 Regulations and the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009 (and any other relevant instruments) to understand the full legal consequence. The Revocation Regulations create a legal shift (removal of the 2013 instrument) but do not itself resolve any downstream contracts, permits or administrative processes that referenced the revoked Regulations.

The Revocation Regulations create no new rights or duties. Their operative text is limited to objective (reg 1), authority (reg 2), commencement (reg 3) and revocation (reg 4). As such:

• There are no positive duties introduced by this instrument. It does not require persons to do anything, nor does it prescribe procedural steps, forms, notices, licensing requirements or approvals. The text contains no obligations of action, no compliance regimes and no monitoring requirements.
• There are no new rights conferred. The instrument does not confer entitlements, rights to apply, review rights, compensatory entitlements or privative clauses.
• There are no penalties, enforcement mechanisms or administrative sanctioning powers created within the instrument itself; enforcement and penalties,if any,remain in the parent Act or in other instruments or statutory schemes referenced elsewhere. The revocation is textual and declaratory in effect.

Conversely, the principal legal effect is negative: the revocation removes any duties, rights, procedures or administrative mechanisms that were contained in the Major Transport Projects Facilitation (Notification) Regulations 2013. Where the 2013 Regulations previously imposed duties or created entitlements, those statutory duties and entitlements cease to have effect from the commencement date of the revocation instrument. Because this instrument does not include savings or transitional clauses, those cessations take effect without statutory modification within this instrument.

Implications for administrative decision-making and rights of review are not addressed in the text. If the 2013 Regulations contained appeal or review rights, those statutory rights would be removed by the revocation unless preserved by other law or by the parent Act. The Revocation Regulations do not state that any particular rights of review remain, nor do they create replacement processes.

Interpretation and form: the endnotes bring in interpretive rules from the Interpretation of Legislation Act 1984 concerning headings, examples, punctuation and provision numbers. Those interpretive rules affect how duties or rights in any statutory instruments (including the revoked 2013 Regulations, if one needs to read them historically) are understood, but do not themselves create duties.

Practical consequence for practitioners: to determine the specific duties and rights that have been removed, an interested party must read the 2013 Regulations themselves and then trace which powers in the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009 or other instruments now remain to regulate the field. The Revocation Regulations themselves provide the declaratory step but not the substantive mapping of duties or rights.

The Revocation Regulations contain no penalty provisions, no infringement schemes and no enforcement mechanisms. None of the four regulations introduces an offence, pecuniary penalty, disqualification, compliance notice mechanism or enforcement agency within the text. That absence has several concrete legal implications, grounded in the instrument’s text.

First, because the instrument is a revocation instrument (reg 4), it does not on its face create new enforcement architecture. Enforcement and penalty powers relevant to the matters previously regulated by the 2013 Regulations must be sourced in the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009, in other subordinate instruments that remain in force, or in general administrative law and criminal provisions elsewhere. The Revocation Regulations do not purport to transfer or reallocate enforcement powers.

Second, the instrument contains no savings or transitional penalty provisions. Where the revoked 2013 Regulations contained offences, those offences will cease to apply after revocation unless preserved by separate statutory provision. Because this instrument does not state any saving of offences, the legal effect is that the offence provisions in the revoked instrument no longer operate as of the commencement date. The text supplied does not indicate whether the parent Act provides for continuation of particular offences or whether other instruments replace them.

Third, the endnotes record that the Revocation Regulations will themselves sunset ten years after making under the Subordinate Legislation Act 1994 (Endnote 1). Sunset mechanics concern the continued existence of the revocation instrument, not enforcement of the revoked instrument. The effect is that the revocation instrument is time-limited in its own statutory life; it will lapse under the Subordinate Legislation Act unless otherwise dealt with. This procedural feature does not create additional enforcement powers.

For practitioners: any enforcement obligations or exposure must be traced to the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009 or other instruments. Because the revocation instrument is silent on penalties, counsel and compliance officers must review the content of the revoked 2013 Regulations and the parent Act to map current liability. The Revocation Regulations supply only the fact of revocation and the relevant dates; they do not provide transitional enforcement rules, nor do they state whether any existing compliance actions will be continued, discontinued or must be reinitiated under other provisions.

This Statutory Rule situates itself within multiple layers of Victorian legislation. The explicit interactions recorded in the text and endnotes are as follows.

Parent Act: The Regulations are made under section 266 of the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009 (reg 2). The instrument therefore exercises delegated legislative power conferred by that Act. The Revocation Regulations remove a subordinate instrument that presumably was also made under the parent Act. The instrument does not reproduce s 266 or the parent Act; it simply identifies that as the authorising provision. To understand substantive regulatory coverage, one must read the parent Act alongside any remaining subordinate instruments.

Subordinate Legislation Act 1994: The endnotes record that this Statutory Rule will sunset ten years after its making under section 5 of the Subordinate Legislation Act 1994 (Endnote 1). That statute imposes temporal limits on subordinate instruments; it means the revocation instrument itself will cease to have effect on 30 November 2031 unless otherwise preserved or remade in accordance with the Subordinate Legislation Act. The sunset mechanism interacts with parliamentary oversight and ensures periodic review of subordinate instruments.

Interpretation of Legislation Act 1984 (ILA): The endnotes incorporate ILA interpretive rules and authorisations for style changes. The ILA provisions recorded include section 54A (authorising style changes), references to section 39B (concerning insertion of subregulations into Schedules), and effects of amendments to section 36 on headings, examples, punctuation and provision numbers. Those interpretive rules govern how the text of this Statutory Rule is to be read and how any inserted or amended material in other statutory rules is to be treated. They are procedural and hermeneutic in effect.

Revoked instrument: The primary direct legal interaction is with the Major Transport Projects Facilitation (Notification) Regulations 2013, which are revoked by reg 4. Revocation removes the subordinate instrument from the statute book. Any cross-references in other legislation to the 2013 Regulations may now point to a non-existent instrument; the legal effect of such broken cross-references depends on the wording of those other laws and on whether the parent Act or other instruments preserve the substance of the revoked provisions.

Other materials: The endnotes state that explanatory memoranda, table of provisions, endnotes and other post-text material do not form part of a Statutory Rule (ILA s 36(3) etc). That means the endnotes and explanatory material included with the printed version do not themselves create legal obligations or rights; they are aids to readers but not law.

Practical consequence: to trace current regulatory requirements for major transport projects, practitioners must read the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009, any remaining subordinate instruments, and note that the specific Notification Regulations from 2013 are no longer in force from 1 December 2021. Where other statutes or instruments rely on the 2013 Regulations, this revocation may create gaps, necessitating legislative or administrative replacement or reliance on residual powers in the parent Act.

The instrument contains a short amendment history recorded in the endnotes and version information. The Table of Amendments explicitly states there are no amendments made to the Major Transport Projects Facilitation (Notification) Revocation Regulations 2021 by statutory rules, subordinate instruments or Acts. The version in the supplied text is Version No. 001, dated as at 1 December 2021.

The endnotes also record that this version does not contain amendments that are not yet in operation. That means the printed version is current as at the date shown and there were no pending amendments that had been made but not commenced.

The Revocation Regulations themselves effect a single amendment to the statute book: they remove the Major Transport Projects Facilitation (Notification) Regulations 2013. The explanatory details (Endnote 4) simply identify the revoked instrument’s statutory rule number (S.R. No. 130/2013). No successor instrument is recorded in this instrument’s amendment history.

The Subordinate Legislation Act 1994’s sunset provision, as referenced in the endnotes, functions as a temporal limit on the life of the revocation instrument. Unless remade or otherwise preserved pursuant to the Subordinate Legislation Act or other relevant processes, the Revocation Regulations will automatically sunset ten years from the date of making (30 November 2031). That sunset mechanism is a statutory form of amendment-by-lapse: the subordinate instrument’s life is constrained by external statutory rules.

Because the Revocation Regulations are purely declaratory and do not contain staged repeal or phased amendment steps, their amendment history in practice is minimal. Any material changes to the regulatory architecture for notifications under the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009 would either be effected by amending the parent Act, by making new subordinate instruments under the Act, or by remaking or rescinding this revocation instrument before its sunset date. None of those subsequent routes are recorded in the present text.

For practitioners maintaining regulatory change logs, the critical amendment event recorded here is the formal repeal of the 2013 Notification Regulations effective 1 December 2021. The absence of transitional or saving amendments in this instrument means that any further amendments needed to re-establish notification regimes would need to be implemented separately.

The supplied material contains no record of litigation arising under these Regulations. There are no cases or judicial authorities cited in the text, endnotes or explanatory details. The instrument is a Statutory Rule that effects a revocation; the endnotes do not refer to any disputes, judicial interpretation or legal challenges to the revocation.

Because the instrument itself does not create offences, duties or rights, it is less likely in itself to have generated immediate litigation. Litigation arising from the practical effects of the revocation,such as disputes over whether a previously issued notice remains valid, whether an application made under the 2013 Regulations survives their repeal, or whether administrative decisions taken under the revoked instrument retain effect,would be matters for the courts to resolve using the parent Act, general principles of statutory interpretation, savings provisions in other legislation, and administrative law principles. None of those matters are recorded in the text supplied.

The endnotes record interpretive guidance from the Interpretation of Legislation Act 1984 that affects how subordinate instruments and their text are read; those statutory interpretive rules have themselves been the subject of judicial attention historically, but no cases are cited here. The instrument’s own record is silent on litigation.

Practitioners seeking litigation history will therefore need to consult court records and legal reporting services for any cases that considered the revocation or the legal effects of removing the 2013 Notification Regulations. The present instrument provides the factual detail necessary to locate such litigation: the revocation took effect on 1 December 2021 and the revoked instrument is S.R. No. 130/2013, which allows targeted case-law searching. The instrument, as presented, contains no litigation references or judicial decisions.

This instrument is short and formal, but there are several practical, legal and administrative pitfalls to note that flow directly from the text or from what the text omits.

No transitional or savings clauses: The Revocation Regulations contain no transitional arrangements, saving provisions, or express statements preserving rights, licences, approvals, notices, applications or pending proceedings made under the revoked 2013 Regulations. Because the revocation is expressed without qualification in reg 4, parties cannot rely on this instrument to preserve status quo items. If the 2013 Regulations included procedural periods, lodged applications, or continuing obligations, their statutory basis has been removed by this instrument unless preserved elsewhere. That raises the risk of immediate legal uncertainty for ongoing matters that previously relied on the 2013 Regulations.

Absence of replacement rules: The instrument does not replace the 2013 Regulations with any new notification regime. Where the legislated notification framework was necessary for administration of the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009, its removal without replacement may create gaps in regulatory processes. The instrument itself does not direct administrators to alternative processes or to the parent Act for substitute powers.

Potential for broken cross-references: Other statutes, subordinate instruments, departmental policies, contracts, planning instruments or administrative procedures may refer directly to the 2013 Notification Regulations. Revocation will render such cross-references ineffective. The instrument does not include a schedule identifying affected references, so those cross-references must be located and remediated on a case-by-case basis.

No penalty preservation: If the revoked 2013 Regulations contained offences, penalty provisions or enforcement mechanisms, those mechanisms cease to operate as a result of revocation unless preserved elsewhere. That may affect the enforceability of historical contraventions or the ability to sanction conduct that was previously an offence under the revoked instrument.

Sunset of the revocation instrument: The Revocation Regulations will themselves sunset on 30 November 2031 under the Subordinate Legislation Act 1994 (Endnote 1). This means the formal act of revocation has a limited statutory life and could, in principle, lapse in a manner that complicates the statutory record if not managed. Sunset does not reintroduce the revoked instrument by itself, but it imposes a procedural deadline on the instrument that regulators and drafters should note.

Interpretive technicalities: The endnotes import rules about headings, examples, punctuation and provision numbers under the Interpretation of Legislation Act 1984. Those technical rules affect statutory construction and can produce subtle interpretive consequences for adjacent or related instruments. Practitioners should not ignore these hermeneutic rules when construing the effect of the revocation and any residual references.

Record-keeping and communication: Because the instrument provides no administrative guidance about steps agencies must take to notify stakeholders of the repeal, affected parties may not be aware of the change. The instrument alone does not require departments to publish guidance, but good administrative practice would be to communicate the change and the implications for ongoing matters.

Compliance here is primarily a matter of identifying whether and how the revocation affects a particular matter, because the Revocation Regulations do not themselves create active obligations. The practical compliance steps, grounded in the text and its implications, are as follows.

1. Identify whether the 2013 Notification Regulations applied to your matter. The Revocation Regulations (reg 4) remove the 2013 Regulations. To understand the impact, locate the Major Transport Projects Facilitation (Notification) Regulations 2013 (S.R. No. 130/2013) and read them in full. The revocation instrument does not state what the 2013 Regulations contained, so compliance begins with reconstructing the pre‑revocation legal position.

2. Map ongoing instruments and processes. Determine whether any current permits, notices, applications, or procedural timeframes relied on the 2013 Regulations. Because this revocation contains no savings clause, any statutory basis for such instruments may have been removed on 1 December 2021. Prepare a register of instruments or actions that referenced the 2013 Regulations.

3. Check the parent Act. Examine the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009, including s 266 (the authorising provision recorded in reg 2), to determine whether the Act itself provides residual powers, transitional provisions, or delegated rule-making power that could be used to restore notification processes or to validate existing actions. The Revocation Regulations do not modify the parent Act; the Act remains the foundational statutory instrument.

4. Review related subordinate legislation and policies. Search for other subordinate instruments or departmental policies that may have been made to replace or replicate the 2013 Regulations’ effects. The Table of Amendments in this instrument records no amendments to the Revocation Regulations themselves; it does not preclude other instruments existing or being made to address the gap.

5. Address contracts and external references. Identify any contracts, planning approvals, procurement documents or statutory instruments that expressly refer to the 2013 Regulations. Where references now point to a repealed instrument, parties may need to agree amendments, seek clarification from administering agencies, or obtain legal advice about the continuing validity of contractual provisions tied to the repealed Regulations.

6. Communicate with administrative agencies. If you are an affected regulated entity, contact the administering agency responsible under the Major Transport Projects Facilitation Act 2009 to confirm how the agency is dealing with matters formerly governed by the 2013 Regulations. The instrument was made by the Governor in Council (Endnote 1), but administrative implementation is typically handled by the responsible department.

7. Monitor for replacement instruments or guidance. The revocation does not prevent future subordinate instruments being made under s 266 to reintroduce notification rules. Keep watch for new Statutory Rules or departmental guidelines that may supplement or replace the 2013 Regulations.

8. Consider remedial applications where necessary. Where revocation has resulted in loss of statutory authority for an ongoing application or approval, consider whether administrative remedies, ministerial discretions or declaratory relief are available under the parent Act or other legislation. Because the Revocation Regulations include no transitional provisions, remedies will depend on other legal sources.

9. Record the dates. The revocation took effect on 1 December 2021 (reg 3 and Endnote 1). Ensure any compliance timelines are understood in light of that date. The revocation instrument itself will sunset on 30 November 2031 under the Subordinate Legislation Act 1994 (Endnote 1); note that sunset for statutory housekeeping, though it does not restore the revoked instrument.

10. Seek legal advice for contested matters. If there is dispute about whether a particular right or obligation survives the revocation, or about the validity of actions taken under the 2013 Regulations around the revocation date, obtain legal advice. The Revocation Regulations supply the factual basis for dispute (the express repeal), but resolution will require analysis of the 2013 Regulations’ terms and the parent Act.

These steps are procedural and derive from the instrument’s text: the Regulations revoke a subordinate instrument, do not provide transitional protections, and were made under s 266, commencing 1 December 2021. Compliance therefore means reconstructing the regulatory map and taking administrative or legal steps to protect ongoing matters formerly governed by the repealed instrument.