Legislative Guidelines

This sticky is to explain how to write a bill and also to explain some Parliamentary language.

A bill is a piece of proposed legislation that is to be debated by the Legislative Assembly and the Senate.

Once a bill is passed by the Legislative Assembly and Senate it becomes an Act of the Alliance Parliament.

If a bill has failed to garner enough support for it to become law (also called and Act) it is filed in the Declined legislation forum.

Bills

In order to become an Act of Parliament, a Bill must be passed by both Houses of Parliament and receive Presidential Assent.

Acts of Parliament consist of the following main elements–

the Short Title – e.g. "House of Lords Act 1999";

the Long Title – e.g. "An Act to restrict membership of the House of Lords by virtue of a hereditary peerage; to make related provision about disqualifications for voting at elections to, and for membership of, the House of Commons; and for connected purposes." The long title describes the contents of the Act;

the sections – which contain the main provisions of the Act;


Bills contain the same elements, but “sections” of Bills are called “clauses” (although, somewhat perversely, divisions of clauses are called “subsections”).

The Minister for Parliamentary services will assign all Bills with a Legislative number and determine the Class of Bill, then when there is enough support for the Bill it will be moved to the Voting Stage.