PCO introduces new way of referring to legislative amendments

The Parliamentary Counsel Office (PCO) has approved a new way of describing legisative amendments made to other legislation. The new terminology has started to be introduced from 1 January 2012 and will be implemented gradually. Bills already before Parliament will continue to use the old terminology.

The PCO says the new approach is used consistently irrespective of its location. Up to now the main body of Bills and regulations, schedules within Bills and regulations, and Supplementary Order Papers have all used different terminology to describe amendments.

The new system also uses more direct language and generally uses fewer words.

Among the new changes which are being introduced, amendments will be given in the form of a command instead of a description ("Repeal secvtion 41" will be used now instead of "Section 41 is repealed") "delete" will be used instead of "omit" and "replace" will be used instead of "substitute" (eg, "Replace section 13 with:" instead of "Section 13 is repealed and the following section substituted:"

Further information on the changes is available here.