What it does
The Rules Publication Act 1953 establishes a centralised administrative framework for the printing, numbering, publication, citation, and exemption of statutory rules (delegated legislation) in South Australia. It does not create new substantive rights or obligations; rather it prescribes the procedural steps that must be followed after a statutory rule is made by the Governor or a rule-making authority under another Act. The key mechanical functions are: requiring every statutory rule to be numbered in a manner approved by the Chief Parliamentary Counsel and sent to an approved person for production or distribution (section 5(1)); allowing a notice in the Gazette stating that a rule has been made and indicating its general purport to satisfy any statutory requirement for gazettal (section 5(2)); mandating that reproduced rules contain a reference to the enabling Act, the date of making, and the date of effect (section 5(3)); and providing that a rule produced with formal or introductory parts omitted is nonetheless taken for all purposes as a copy of that rule (section 5(4)). The Act also provides for the citation of statutory rules by short title, year-and-number, or the expression “Statutory Rules” or “S.R.” followed by year and number (section 6). It grants the Attorney-General a broad discretion to exempt any instrument or class of instruments from the operation of the Act if it is “unnecessary or undesirable” that they be numbered and printed (section 4(2)), and makes the Attorney-General’s decision on whether an instrument is a statutory rule final (section 2(2)). The Governor may make regulations concerning the form of printing, appointment of an advisory committee, preparation of annual volumes, and examination of drafts by the Chief Parliamentary Counsel (section 9). In effect, the Act outsources the detailed mechanics of delegated legislation production to executive officials, but with significant room for discretionary exemptions and a conclusive determination power that can remove instruments from the publication regime altogether. The Act has been heavily amended, with most of its original operational sections repealed or replaced, especially by the Legislation Publication Act 1996 which now governs the actual publication of legislation. The residual provisions are largely skeletal and referential.