Talk:List of acts of the New Zealand Parliament (1840–1890)

Breaking links
A lot of these were inadvertantly linking to overseas acts with the same name. I have 'broken' the se by changing their names to Name of Act New Zealand. --Helenalex 06:46, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I would think a better naming convention is Name of Act Year, as that is how the legislation is normally refered to. If you must still disambiguate then use (New Zealand) as a disambiguator. The problems with the names on this list arrise because the original author used lots of google links under the year. I would also order the list alphabetically, though ordering by year is valuable for historical purposes, because it shows how old the legislation is. -- Cameron Dewe 04:21, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Why two pages?
Why does this page only go up to 1980? Surely it would make more sense to have all NZ statutes on one page. --Helenalex 06:46, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I split them because the combined page was number one on Special:Longpages. It turned out that the reason that the page was so long was because it was riddled with totally unnecessary google search links, and though these have been removed from one of the split-out pages, it is still a work in progress (to be completed when I have time). But yes, you are right, at some point the pages should be recombined, and its my bad that they were split in the first place. Jdcooper 03:35, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it is time for a merger. The clean-up that has been done probably makes the clean-up tag redundant now. Should the clean-up tag be replaced with a merger tag? -- Cameron Dewe 04:21, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Useless list page?
Currently the page is quite useless, it does not include any information about what years (and which) Acts were created and/or revised. The years of most recent Act revision is even missing. Is there a better way of including Act status info? I am happy to put the revision year information back in. NevilleDNZ 05:10, 11 June 2007 (UTC)


 * If the page is useless, how can it be made useful? Or should it be deleted? To me, to make the page useful it should:


 * ONLY list the principal or consolidated Act for each piece of legislation.
 * If an ammendment is listed then it should be notable.
 * e.g. because of major law reform.
 * Include the date in the Act's title.
 * e.g. Crimes Act 1961
 * Be in alphabetical order.
 * Ordering by date or year is only useful if the Act or Bill number is used. such as:
 * 1961 No 43 Crimes Act 1961
 * Be a full list, not time limited.
 * Feedback? -- Cameron Dewe 14:21, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * This page is a bit of a mess, especially since most of the acts don't actually have pages. I'd be inclined to scrap the whole thing and just create a 'NZ legislation' or 'Statutes of NZ' category, but if you want to reorganise it, it sounds like you'd do a decent job. One thing to bear in mind is that this list is far from complete - it should either be a list of every statute passed in NZ, which would be very long, or only the ones which actually have pages, in which case a category would make more sense. --Helenalex 20:41, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * There already is a Category:New Zealand law. While I think categories are a good idea for related articles, once they are written, a list like this one is better when articles have not been written. The list gives starting links for articles that should be written. If a complete list of New Zealand Statutes is to be created, then while the page could list all statutes, only the principal acts that are in force should have article links on the page, without having an article. Amending and repealed legislation should not have a link, unless that legislation already has its own article. -- Cameron Dewe 09:12, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Re-organisation
I suggest complete re-organisation along the lines of those of UK statutes. The list is pretty inadequate as it is. What is the Wills Act 1837 doing here? That does not make any sense. The first Act passed by the New Zealand parliament was the English Laws Act of 1854, which I have added, and will remove the Wills Act. Mgoodyear (talk) 19:34, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
 * For clarity, the Wills Act was a UK Act which remained in force in NZ. For a discussion, see Law Commission, Report 41, Succession Law - A Succession (Wills) Act, 1997. I see little point in listing all English laws applicable in New Zealand at any time (which is vast!). Mgoodyear (talk) 19:53, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Headings
Have taken out some duplicate headings for 1887 & 1891; also 1840s, 1850s etc all to be main headings; 1850s etc were subheadings of 1840s. Possibly the number of acts amended for 1887, 1891 is not correct? NB: Leave as list not category Hugo999 (talk) 03:18, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

List of Statutes of New Zealand 1840 – 1890
Some amendments I made to List of Statutes of New Zealand (1840–1890) have been reverted as vandalism, so I will list the amendments I see as needed for someone else to carry out.


 * The contents table for 1840s is as expected with individual years ie 1841 to 1849 by year. :But the subsequent decades 1850s to 1890s are shown as subparagraphs of 1840s, so that the only main (underlined) heading in the article is “1840s” for the whole list of acts to 1891.
 * The 1880s run 1881, 1882, 1883, 1884, 1885 1886, 1887 (14 acts), 1888 (1 act, repealing an 1887 act; it is in the Laws database as 1888 No 1), then 1887 again (13 acts), then 1889 (2 acts). Why arent the 1887 acts all under one subheading?
 * The 1890s has only 1891 (1 act).
 * Then (below the 1890s) the 1880s again (1889, 34 acts). One I looked at (Kumara Sludge-channel Act) is definitely an 1889 act. So why aren’t these acts under the earlier 1889 subheading?


 * The articles should have one heading per year, listing (alphabetically) acts passed in that year. If they are listed, acts amending or repealing earlier acts should be listed under the year that the amending act was passed. Some acts have frequent amending acts; the Government Railways Act 1887 was amended many times, the last in 1980. Hugo999 (talk) 11:32, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
 * The revert has been re-reverted, though I would appreciate some checks on my edits! The headings are rather tricky. Hugo999 (talk) 21:55, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Completeness
Is there some rationale behind 1852 and 1855 missing from the list?  Schwede 66  19:57, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Consolidating and repealing of legislation
Pretty much all of the public legislation on this page has been consolidated and repealed by later legislation. Initially this happened during the 1880's under the Reprint of Statutes Act 1878, and later under the Consolidated Statutes Enactment Act 1908. Many of those statutes do not appear as "as enacted" legislation because they are consolidations of existing legislation. However, it is the year of consolidated statutes that are usually referred to. This means that the year of a statute is an important part of the title. Also the enacted title of an Act does not necessarily reflect its subsequent name, because subsequent legislation might amend the name of an earlier Act or even totally consolidate, repeal and rewrite it. All the red links on these pages are likely to refer to legislation that is no longer in force or else link to generic legislation names. This is misleading.

I think the practice that should be adopted is to include both the name and year of the Act in the title. Usually there is a section in the Act that is called Title which says what title the legislation should be known by. That title is legal name. Also in amending Acts there is often another section that says what is the principal act being amended. The wiki-links should refer to articles about the current legislation, which should probably the history section that explains how the current legislation evolved, if that is relevant. For example, the Arms Act of 1846, as well as various other Arms related Acts in 1845, the 1860's and in 1880 consolidation should all link to the Arms Act 1983, which would avoid needing to have a long list of amending years as well as needing to amend these list pages every time an applicable Act was amended. This would be more accurate and precise. - 122.57.243.61 (talk) 23:37, 28 January 2020 (UTC)