You can search legislation on this website using Boolean operators. The operators used on this site are explained below:
And
Placing and or + between two search terms will return only results that include both terms.
Examples:
major and crime major + crime
Or
Placing or or | between two search terms will return results that include either (or both) of those terms.
Examples:
tobacco or liquor tobacco | liquor
Not
Placing not before a search term, or - immediately before a search term, will return results that do not include that term.
Examples:
controlled not substances controlled -substances
Quotation marks
Placing a phrase between double quotation marks will treat that phrase as a single search term. This will return results including that whole phrase, but not results that include parts of that phrase. Search terms in quotation marks can be used in combination with other operators as if they were single words.
Examples:
"controlled substances" assault not "serious injury"
Asterisks (wildcards)
An asterisk at the end of a string of letters will return results including any words that start with that string of letters. (Asterisks cannot be used inside quotation marks.)
Example:
prob*
This search will return results including any of the words "probate", "probation", and "probity".
Proximity search
If you search for a series of words that are
- enclosed in quotation marks and
- followed by ~ and then a number indicating how close those words need to be to each other
this will return results where the words in quotation marks are separated from each other by a number of intervening words. The number of intervening words must be no greater than the number specified in the search query.
Example:
"severe treatment"~2
This search will return results containing the phrase "severe substance dependence treatment".
Differences in characters
If you search for a word followed immediately by ~ and then a number indicating how many characters in that word are allowed to be different.
Example:
magistracy~2
This search will return results including either
- the word "magistracy", or
- words that differ from "magistracy" by up to two characters.
As the word "magistrate" meets that test, this search will also return results including the word "magistrate".
You can search legislation on this website by title, content, or title and content.
Searching the content of Acts in force and statutory rules in force
This will search the contents of the PDFs and Word documents attached to the latest versions of those Acts or statutory rules. This includes any notices attached to those versions.
Searching the content of Bills
This will search the contents of all PDFs and Word documents attached to Bills. This includes, for example, the introduction prints of Bills, the explanatory memoranda of Bills, and the House Amendments circulated for Bills.
Searching the content of repealed Acts and revoked statutory rules
This will search the contents of the PDFs and Word documents attached to the last versions of those Acts and statutory rules before they were repealed or revoked. This includes any notices attached to those versions.
Searching the content of Acts as made and statutory rules as made
This will search the contents of the PDFs and Word documents attached to these Acts and statutory rules, and any notices attached to them.
By default, the results obtained by doing a search (or filtering a listings page, like Acts in force) are sorted by relevance.
Generally, results that contain the most matches to the search query are considered more relevant than those with fewer matches.
However, the search functionality treats some types of legislation as more relevant than others. Acts and statutory rules in force are considered the most relevant; repealed Acts and revoked statutory rules are considered the least relevant.
If you are searching both the title and the content of the legislation, results in the titles are considered more relevant than results in the content.
On first arriving at a listings page (like Acts in force), or on filtering that list using the starting letter selector, the alphabetical order of the results is considered the most relevant factor.