The comment is often made that we have the High Court Rules in our Statutes database, so why aren’t the Amendment Rules there too?*
(* the answer is at the end of the post.)

This is just one of the many mysteries of Regulations and their administration.

We asked senior editor, online legislation, Ian Neilson to step us through what happens once an Act (primary legislation) is passed and the legislative framework is in place to support its subsequent subordinate legislation and to explain what regulations were included in Brookers Statutes and Regulations Online and why.

Here’s what he had to say:

Regulations or Subordinate legislation

Regulations are also known as subordinate or secondary legislation. All principal and amendment Regulations made under the administering Act are included under the Subordinate legislation link on the title page of the Act.

Regulations

Every Act is administered by a Government department or agency. It is responsible for the day-to-day workings of a piece of legislation. The Regulations are the “nuts and bolts” administration provided for under the Act. They are made pursuant to that Act, and cover a wide spectrum, including:

• Major sets of Rules (District Courts Rules 2009, Securities Regulations 2009)
• Granting of specified exemptions from the requirements of an Act
• New and updated Forms
• the annual updating of salaries and fees.

Most of these regulations form part of the Statutory Regulations (SR) series and are in Brookers Statutes and Regulations of New Zealand.

Once the principal Regulations are in place they can be amended from time to reflect changes in operations.  Principal Regulations will continue until a new Act that substantially changes the workings of a piece of legislation requires new operating rules.

NB. Not all Regulations are called Regulations. They can also be called orders, rules, notices, determinations, proclamations, or warrants.

Gazette notices

All Regulations are notified in the Gazette but NOT all of these are published in the SR series. For example, the hundreds of regulations passed annually dealing with specific local issues are only published in the Gazette because their impact audience is comparatively few.

Very occasionally a Regulation that was originally published in the SR series can be updated by a Gazette notice only. Where this happens Brookers will publish the Gazette notice as part of the Regulations database and update the principal Regulation with the changes made by the notice.

The administering department and the date of notification in the Gazette are noted at the end of every Regulation.

Imperial regulations

There are a small number of regulations made under Acts of the United Kingdom parliament that have force under New Zealand law. These are included in the Regulations database.

Deemed legislation

Some sets of Rules that are administered by Government agencies but are not part of the SR series are included in the Regulations database (eg Land Transport Rules). Amendments to those Rules are included as links to the administering agency website and the principal Rules are updated in the same way as other Regulations in the database.

Revoked Regulations

This partition of the database contains all Regulations revoked since 1 January 1995. Principal Regulations that are revoked are moved, along with all the amendments to those Regulations, to the Revoked Regulations.

And to answer the original opening question ……..

The High Court Rules are part of the Judicature Act and belong in the statutes database. Amendment Rules update details within those Rules and because they don’t have to be passed by Parliament they are published as Statutory Regulations.

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