This is a single section from Chapter 13. Read the full chapter here.

Have the specific definitions and meanings of expressions in Part 2 of the Legislation Act 2019 been considered?

Legislation should apply the definitions in Part 2 of the Legislation Act 2019. New legislation should not restate those definitions.

Part 2 of the Legislation Act 2019 defines what certain words and phrases mean. It is not necessary to restate these definitions in new legislation.

·           Act, enactment, legislation, Order in Council, Proclamation, secondary legislation

·           commencement

·           Commonwealth country, part of the Commonwealth

·           consular officer

·           de facto partner, de facto relationship

·           department, Ministry

·           Gazette

·           Governor-General in Council

·           legislation website

·           maker

·           Minister

·           month and working day office

·           person

·           prescribed

·           presentation exemption

·           proceeding

·           public notification , public notice

·           repeal

·           rules of court

·           writing

·           step-parent, stepdaughter, or any other relationship described by a word containing the prefix “step”

·           definitions of “Act”, “Governor”, “land”, and “person” in enactments passed before 1 November 1999

·           definition of “regulations” in enactments passed before the commencement of the Legislation Act 2019

·           New Zealand, North Island or Te Ika-a-Māui, South Island or Te Waipounamu

·           territorial limits of New Zealand, limits of New Zealand

 

Legislation can define these words and phrases differently but only if necessary. See, for example, the definition of “public notice” in section 5 of the Local Government Act 2002 , the definition of person in section 6 of the Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013, and the different statutory definitions of “working day”, including several that exclude the period from Christmas to mid-January.

Part 2 also includes the following:

  • words that denote a gender
  • words denoting a natural person may include companies and other entities
  • words denoting companies and other entities may include natural persons
  • when sending by post is taken to be done
  • parts of speech and grammatical forms of words defined in any legislation have a corresponding meaning (for example, if an Act defines “supply”, then “supplied” and “supplier” will have a corresponding meaning)
  • words in the singular include the plural and vice versa
  • words used in secondary legislation have the same meaning as in the empowering Act

This page was last modified on