ausleg

The goal of ausleg is to provide information on laws passed by the Australian Parliament since 1901.

The functions: getPrincipalActs; getAmendingActs provide data up to November 2021. The data was scraped by myself from the Federal Register of Legislation¹ and is archived here.

The functions: alrc_as_made; alrc_rels provide data up to April 2022. This data was scraped by the Australian Law Reform Centre² in collaboration with the University of New South Wales and is stored on the ALRC datahub website. These functions make use of the more comprehensive linkage data provided by the ALRC and should be preferred for those beginning new data projects.

Installation

You can install the development version of ausleg from GitHub with:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("palesl/ausleg")

Examples

These examples show some simple functionality of the package:

library(ausleg)


#   Get principal acts and metadata
getPrincipalActs()
#> # A tibble: 5,185 × 15
#>    id_princ…¹ name  date_ena…² year_…³ date_rep…⁴ repea…⁵ word_…⁶ depar…⁷ dept_1
#>    <chr>      <chr> <date>       <int> <date>     <chr>     <int> <chr>   <chr> 
#>  1 C1901A000… Acts… 1901-07-12    1901 NA         <NA>       3527 attorn… attor…
#>  2 C1901A000… Audi… 1901-08-07    1901 1998-01-01 C2004A…   10309 financ… finan…
#>  3 C1901A000… Stat… 1901-09-05    1901 1995-04-18 C2004A…    2071 attorn… attor…
#>  4 C1901A000… Cust… 1901-10-03    1901 NA         <NA>      18323 home a… home …
#>  5 C1901A000… Beer… 1901-10-05    1901 1969-10-01 C1968A…    5085 indust… indus…
#>  6 C1901A000… Dist… 1901-10-05    1901 2006-07-01 C2006A…   15011 treasu… treas…
#>  7 C1901A000… Exci… 1901-10-05    1901 NA         <NA>      11311 treasu… treas…
#>  8 C1901A000… Serv… 1901-10-16    1901 1993-04-10 C2004A…    5011 attorn… attor…
#>  9 C1901A000… Post… 1901-11-16    1901 1975-07-01 C2004A…   22353 postma… postm…
#> 10 C1901A000… Prop… 1901-12-12    1901 1907-07-01 C1906A…   10589 home a… home …
#> # … with 5,175 more rows, 6 more variables: dept_2 <chr>, dept_3 <chr>,
#> #   dept_4 <chr>, dept_5 <chr>, dept_6 <chr>, dept_7 <chr>, and abbreviated
#> #   variable names ¹​id_principal, ²​date_enacted, ³​year_enacted, ⁴​date_repealed,
#> #   ⁵​repealing_act_id, ⁶​word_count, ⁷​departments


# get relationships where one act repeals another 

alrc_relationship_data(rel_type = "repeals")
#> # A tibble: 49,745 × 4
#>    fromId      fromName                                             toId  toName
#>    <chr>       <chr>                                                <chr> <chr> 
#>  1 F2013L01530 Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (… F200… 900 M…
#>  2 F2013L01530 Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (… F200… 900 M…
#>  3 F2013L01530 Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (… F200… 900 M…
#>  4 F2005B01852 A New Tax System (Goods and Services Tax) Waiver of… C200… A New…
#>  5 F2014L00274 Spent and Redundant Instruments Repeal Regulation 2… F201… A New…
#>  6 F2013L01535 Treasury (Spent and Redundant Instruments) Repeal R… F200… A New…
#>  7 F2013L01535 Treasury (Spent and Redundant Instruments) Repeal R… F200… A New…
#>  8 F2020L01498 A New Tax System (Australian Business Number) Regul… F199… A New…
#>  9 F2013L01535 Treasury (Spent and Redundant Instruments) Repeal R… F200… A New…
#> 10 F2013L01535 Treasury (Spent and Redundant Instruments) Repeal R… F200… A New…
#> # … with 49,735 more rows

# get all pieces of regulation legislation

alrc_as_made(leg_type="Regulations")
#> # A tibble: 28,908 × 35
#>    modernN…¹ name  id    serie…² force…³ legVe…⁴ amend…⁵ compi…⁶ legType regsLis
#>    <chr>     <chr> <chr> <chr>   <chr>   <chr>   <chr>   <chr>   <chr>   <chr>  
#>  1 A New Ta… A Ne… F201… F2014L… No lon… <NA>    Amendi… Asmade  Legisl… Regula…
#>  2 A New Ta… A Ne… F201… F2018L… No lon… <NA>    Amendi… Asmade  Legisl… Regula…
#>  3 A New Ta… A Ne… F201… F2012L… No lon… <NA>    Amendi… Asmade  Legisl… Regula…
#>  4 A New Ta… A Ne… F201… F2013L… No lon… <NA>    Amendi… Asmade  Legisl… Regula…
#>  5 A New Ta… A Ne… F200… F2001B… No lon… <NA>    Amendi… Asmade  Legisl… Regula…
#>  6 A New Ta… A Ne… F200… F2003B… No lon… <NA>    Amendi… Asmade  Legisl… Regula…
#>  7 A New Ta… A Ne… F199… F1999B… No lon… <NA>    Princi… Asmade  Legisl… Regula…
#>  8 A New Ta… A Ne… F202… F2020L… In for… Latest… Princi… Asmade  Legisl… Regula…
#>  9 A New Ta… A Ne… F200… F2006L… No lon… <NA>    Amendi… Asmade  Legisl… Regula…
#> 10 A New Ta… A Ne… F200… F2003B… No lon… <NA>    Princi… Asmade  Legisl… Regula…
#> # … with 28,898 more rows, 25 more variables: subject <chr>, maker <chr>,
#> #   numberYear <chr>, originatingBillName <chr>, originatingBillId <chr>,
#> #   description <chr>, administrator <chr>, legDate <date>,
#> #   registrationDate <date>, assent <date>, gazettal <date>, repealDate <date>,
#> #   sunsettingExemptions <chr>, originalSunsetDate <date>,
#> #   firstNewSunsetDate <date>, repealedBy <chr>, tablingOneHouse <chr>,
#> #   tablingOneDate <date>, tablingTwoHouse <chr>, tablingTwoDate <date>, …

Use at own risk

I provide no warranty for errors either in the source material, or in my data collection. This is my best attempt at faithful redistribution of the material available on the Federal Register of Legislation. I would be grateful for any errors you find. Either get in touch or make a pull request!

Image Attribution

Hex image icon: Canberra Parliament House by Anna Hatzisavas from Noun Project

Footnotes

1. Redistributing under the FLR’s Creative Commons 4.0 copyright licence. ↩

2. Redistributing under the ALRC’s Creative Commons 4.0 copyright licence (see bottom of the page). ↩