Information about the law

Legislation is different in each state, but there are some useful referral sites.

Australian Law Online was run by the Australian government to help Australians solve their legal problems. It was both user friendly and a well structured site with information on a wide range of legal issues. Unfortunately, it was decommissioned at the beginning of 2009, although you can still access a lot of information on it. Now it appears that the Commonwealth is no longer providing a similar service, and you need to know what you are looking for.

If you do know what you are looking for, try the Attorney-General's Department web site. Good luck.

Family Relationships Online is another Commonwealth government initiative, which might be useful. As the name suggests, it has a focus on providing access to information about family relationship issues.

There used to be a good web site run by the National Women's Justice Coalition, but when I looked it had not been updated since January 2005. However it still provides some useful links, so check it out. The Reading Room is interesting, but sadly it contains no current material.

If you are looking for information on domestic violence, the Parliamentary Library has it all.

NSW

Law Access is run by the NSW government and gives legal information, advice and referrals for people who have a legal problem in NSW.

The NSW Law and Justice Foundation contains a useful referral directory for clients with legal problems.

Queensland

The Queensland government runs a website called Queensland Legislation. It probably is another site that is useful if you know what you are looking for, but I was put off by the use of meaningless acronyms (meaningless to me, that is) in the top menu - can anyone tell me what ‘Acts, SL as in force' means in English?

Tasmania

The Tasmanian Legislation website gives free public access to Tasmanian legislation, and looks better than the its Queensland counterpart, that is until you click on some of the menu items. For example, ‘Miscellaneous guides' takes you to ‘Publications' on another web site with no explanatory notes. The ‘Subject index' downloads a pdf file with no warning. If you click on the intriguingly named ‘What's not on the legislation website' menu item you end up on a page talking about the Enact Web site and what's not on it! All lovely fun, but not very useful.