Legislative drafting training

Legislation & policy development

Legislative drafting is part of the process of implementing change through legislation — legislation cannot be made, amended or even repealed unless legislative drafting occurs.  Equally, the drafting of legislation is dependent on policy formulation: the change which legislation brings about should be policy based.  In short: legislation generally cannot be drafted without policy proposals: policy proposals often cannot be implemented without legislation. The two are interlinked.

For these reasons, legislative drafting is both a complex technical task (although, like many complex tasks, if it is done well it appears simple) and also part of a dynamic process.  This mix of technical complexity and policy reform leads to the following set of propositions:

  • the objectives of the legislation should be understood by drafters, and expressly set out in the legislation;

  • the legislation should be well structured, so that it can easily be understood by those who use it;

  • the balance between primary legislation (an Act) and subordinate legislation (usually regulations) needs to established;

  • there should be consistency with the many objectives of stakeholders — both Government and external — on a range of issues, such as human rights principles, criminal law sanctions and market intervention;

  • there should be consistency with other legislation — or alternatively other legislation should be amended to achieve consistency.

We offer workshop-based training on legislative drafting, suitable for legislation officers working government departments and agencies. The seminars are intended to develop, consolidate and extend skills in the preparation of legislation in a specific legislative context.   workshop trainingThe workshops' principal objective is to build participants skills in producing legislation which is effective in bringing about change – implementing policy-based reforms.

By agreement with Government agencies, the exercises can be contextualised so that participants can build skills working with the legislation of their sector.

For more, contact us on [+61 3] 9602 5226.