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Legislation register—authentication of material

The ACT legislation register is undergoing fundamental changes to reassure you about the authenticity of the information on it.

Print authorised copies yourself

You can now access authorised printed legislation by downloading authorised files from this web site and printing them yourself. This means that a document printed from an authorised file is legally presumed to be an accurate copy of the piece of legislation.

Until recently, ACT legislation was authorised only when viewed electronically on this web site or when the copy was printed by the government printer.

Extra security is necessary to make sure the documents that are downloaded are true copies of ACT legislation. The ACT Parliamentary Counsel’s Office (PCO), the office that drafts and publishes ACT legislation, has implemented measures to provide this security.

Secure web site—VeriSign SSL Certificate

One important measure has been to provide a secure web site for the legislation register using a VeriSign SSL Certificate. You can verify that the web site is legitimate by checking the certificate—you just click on the VeriSign icon in the bottom right corner of the legislation register’s homepage.

Security technology—digital signatures

PCO digitally signs authorised documents.

Digital signatures are a way of encrypting electronic documents by applying a mathematical code—a ‘private key’—held securely by PCO.

You can use a certificate—a ‘public key’—to confirm that a document was created by PCO and to make sure it hasn’t been changed since the document was last digitally signed. The public key can be downloaded from the digital signatures page on this web site. You need to download the public key only once because it will apply to all digitally signed files on the legislation register.

To use digital signatures, you need Adobe Acrobat 5.0 or Acrobat Reader 5.1 or a higher version of the reader. You can download the latest version of Adobe Reader for free from the Adobe web site.

For step-by-step instructions on how to use digital signatures, click here.

Explanatory statements and bills

Digital signatures are also applied to authorised copies of legislative material such as explanatory statements and bills presented to the Legislative Assembly. These documents have the same legal status as authorised legislation.