Many common words like ‘business day’, ‘document’, ‘individual’, ‘land’, ‘person’ or ‘writing’ are defined in AIA s 2B.  This dictionary should always be your starting point, though it is just a drafting convenience and, like the rest of the AIA, it is displaced by contrary intention in the Act it is applied to (s 2(2))¹…

Prescribed forms of documents are common in tax laws.  Under AIA s 25C, strict compliance with these forms isn’t necessary and substantial compliance is sufficient.  This is determined by considering the purpose of the form and its contents as a whole, not by analysing its individual parts separately⁴.  Failure to use the correct form isn’t necessarily fatal…

Like notes, examples are part of the Act but their interpretive status is unclear⁹.  Under AIA s 15AD(a), they are ‘not exhaustive’ and can’t limit a provision’s scope.  AIA s 15AD(b) used to say that a provision overrides its example if the two are inconsistent.  It was rewritten in 2011 and now says ‘the example may extend …

These are governed by rules in AIA ss 7-11B.  iNOW! has previously discussed the presumption against retrospectivity in s 7(2) and the cross-reference rules in s 10¹¹.  Section 7(1) also says that if a repealing Act or an Act altering the common law is itself repealed, the original law isn’t automatically revived.

Section 11B says that …

The Queen v A L [2016] VSCA 156

How do you interpret everyday words in a statute when they also have a specialised trade or technical meaning?  Normally words take their ordinary meaning – particularly since parliament can define a word if it is meant to have a special meaning¹.  However, context, phrasing or subject matter may show …

Military Rehabilitation v May [2016] HCA 19 

This case (at [52]) reminds us that when a judge explains what statutory words mean, their reformulation cannot be substituted for those words and construed as if it were the statutory text³.  Unlike statutes, the meaning of judgments isn’t found by analysing the specific words used by the judge.  Instead, read …

Duffy v Authority [2016] NSWSC 1062

If a provision refers to a specific thing, it may implicitly exclude other things of that type, especially if similar parts of the Act do mention those other things⁵.  Here (at [41-42]), notice had to be given to ‘the licensee’.  This meant no-one else needed to be notified, since different provisions did …

H v Commissioner of Police [2016] SADC 64

Always search for an interpretation that gives all the words of a provision some meaning and effect and doesn’t make any of them redundant¹⁰.  This doesn’t mean every word has to change the provision’s scope or operation – some could have a limited effect, and Parliament may have intended others …