🏛️ Australia Federal Register of Legislation Scraper

🚀 Export Australian legislation in seconds. Pull Acts, legislative instruments, and other titles from the official Federal Register of Legislation, complete with title IDs, making dates, and in-force status.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-06-08 · 📊 Up to 14 fields per record · official OData API · whole-register coverage

Turn the Australian Federal Register of Legislation into clean, structured records you can drop into a compliance tracker, a legal research database, or a policy monitoring dashboard. Search by title name, restrict to a single collection, or list the entire register, and get every matching title with its ID, making date, collection, principal flag, and current status.

Coverage is the complete public register as the Australian Government Office of Parliamentary Counsel publishes it: Acts, legislative instruments, notifiable instruments, the Constitution, continued law, gazettes, and more. Data is read live from the official api.prod.legislation.gov.au OData endpoint, so every run reflects the register at run time.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Legal researchers and law librarians	Build and refresh a searchable legislation index
Compliance and governance teams	Track which instruments are in force
Policy analysts and government affairs	Monitor new and amended titles by collection
RegTech and legal-tech builders	Seed an app with structured legislation data

📋 What the Australia Legislation Register Scraper does

This Actor queries the official Federal Register of Legislation OData API and returns one clean record per title that matches your input:

• Search the title name for a keyword such as Privacy or Migration, or leave it empty to list the whole register.
• Filter by collection to restrict results to Acts, legislative instruments, notifiable instruments, and more.
• Advanced OData filter for power users who want raw $filter expressions like isPrincipal eq true or year eq 2024.
• Sort by title ID (roughly chronological, since the ID is year-encoded) or by name.

You control how many records come back, and every record carries a scrapedAt timestamp.

🎬 Full Demo (🚧 Coming soon)

⚙️ Input

Field	Type	Description
search	string	Free text matched against the title name, for example Privacy or Migration. Returns every title whose name contains this text. Leave empty to list all titles.
collection	select	Restrict results to one collection: Act, LegislativeInstrument, NotifiableInstrument, AdministrativeArrangementsOrder, Constitution, ContinuedLaw, Gazette, or PrerogativeInstrument. Empty returns all collections.
filter	string	Optional raw OData $filter expression for advanced queries, for example isPrincipal eq true. Combined with the search and collection using AND.
orderBy	select	Sort order: id desc, id asc, name asc, or name desc. Defaults to id desc (newest first).
maxItems	integer	How many records to return. Free plan is capped at 10.

Example 1 — every privacy-related title, newest first

{
    "search": "Privacy",
    "orderBy": "id desc",
    "maxItems": 50
}

Example 2 — principal Acts only

{
    "collection": "Act",
    "filter": "isPrincipal eq true",
    "maxItems": 100
}

⚠️ Good to Know: Title IDs are year-encoded, so sorting by id desc returns the most recent titles first. The upstream API rejects sorting by making date when a filter is present, which is why only ID and name ordering are offered.

📊 Output

Each record looks like this:

Field	Description
📌 title	Title name
🏷 id	Federal Register title ID
🔗 url	Direct link to the title on legislation.gov.au
📊 status	Lifecycle status of the title
🗂 collection	Register collection (Act, LegislativeInstrument, etc.)
🗃 subCollection	Subcollection where applicable
📅 makingDate	Date the title was made
⭐ isPrincipal	Whether this is a principal (not amending) title
✅ isInForce	Whether the title is currently in force
📆 year	Year of the title
#️⃣ number	Title number
📚 seriesType	Series type
🔢 optionalSeriesNumber	Optional series number
🗓 asMadeRegisteredAt	When the as-made version was registered
📜 originatingBillUri	Originating bill URI where available
🕒 scrapedAt	Collection timestamp
❌ error	Null on success

Real sample — an Act

{
    "title": "Privacy Act 1988",
    "id": "C2004A03712",
    "url": "https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2004A03712",
    "status": "InForce",
    "collection": "Act",
    "subCollection": "Act",
    "makingDate": "1988-12-14",
    "isPrincipal": true,
    "isInForce": true,
    "year": 1988,
    "number": 119,
    "seriesType": "Act",
    "optionalSeriesNumber": null,
    "asMadeRegisteredAt": "2004-08-23T00:00:00",
    "originatingBillUri": null,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-06-08T17:09:21.000Z",
    "error": null
}

Real sample — a legislative instrument

{
    "title": "Migration Regulations 1994",
    "id": "C2004A04791",
    "url": "https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2004A04791",
    "status": "InForce",
    "collection": "LegislativeInstrument",
    "subCollection": "Regulation",
    "makingDate": "1994-08-25",
    "isPrincipal": true,
    "isInForce": true,
    "year": 1994,
    "number": 268,
    "seriesType": "LegislativeInstrument",
    "optionalSeriesNumber": null,
    "asMadeRegisteredAt": "2005-03-01T00:00:00",
    "originatingBillUri": null,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-06-08T17:09:21.000Z",
    "error": null
}

✨ Why choose this Actor

• Reads the official Federal Register of Legislation OData API, not a scraped HTML page.
• One clean, flat record per title that maps straight onto a database schema.
• Principal and in-force flags let you filter to exactly the law you care about.
• Search, collection, and raw OData filters combine for precise queries.
• No account, no key, and no login required.

📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Effort	Structured fields	In-force flag	Maintenance
This Actor	One run	Yes	Yes	None on your side
Copying from the register by hand	Hours	Inconsistent	Manual	Constant
Writing your own OData client	Days	Depends	Manual	You own the upkeep

🚀 How to use

1. Create a free Apify account using this sign-up link.
2. Open the Australia Federal Register of Legislation Scraper.
3. Enter a search term or pick a collection (or leave both empty for the whole register).
4. Set maxItems to the number of records you want.
5. Click Start and grab your results when the run finishes.

💼 Business use cases

Legal research

Goal	How this helps
Build a searchable legislation index	Pull titles by name or collection with IDs and links
Find principal instruments fast	Filter with isPrincipal eq true

Compliance and governance

Goal	How this helps
Track what is in force	Use the isInForce flag on every record
Audit a regulatory area	Search by keyword across all collections

Policy monitoring

Goal	How this helps
Watch for new titles	Sort by id desc and snapshot on a schedule
Group law by collection	Use the collection and subCollection fields

Legal-tech and RegTech

Goal	How this helps
Seed an app database	Export structured titles to CSV, JSON, or Excel
Keep links current	Every record carries a canonical register URL

🔌 Automating Australia Legislation Register Scraper

Connect runs to the tools you already use:

• Make and Zapier to trigger runs and route records into sheets or databases.
• Slack to post a summary when new titles appear.
• Airbyte to load results into a warehouse.
• GitHub Actions to schedule periodic snapshots.
• Google Drive to archive each run's output.

🌟 Beyond business use cases

• Research: study how a body of law grows and changes over time.
• Personal: track legislation relevant to your own situation.
• Non-profit: power a free community legal-information resource.
• Experimentation: prototype a legal-search app without writing a scraper.

🤖 Ask an AI assistant

Paste your results into ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or Microsoft Copilot and ask it to summarise an Act, group titles by collection, or flag which instruments are no longer in force.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need an account or API key? No. The Actor reads the public Federal Register of Legislation OData API, which needs no login or key.

Which collections can I pull? Acts, legislative instruments, notifiable instruments, administrative arrangements orders, the Constitution, continued law, gazettes, and prerogative instruments.

Can I search by name? Yes. The search field matches any title whose name contains your text.

What is the advanced OData filter for? It lets power users pass a raw $filter expression, such as year eq 2024, that is combined with the search and collection using AND.

Why can't I sort by making date? The upstream API rejects making-date ordering when a filter is present. Title IDs are year-encoded, so sorting by ID is roughly chronological.

How do I know if a title is current? Each record includes an isInForce flag and a status field.

How fresh is the data? Every run reads live from the official API, so it reflects the register at run time.

Can I export to Excel or CSV? Yes. Apify lets you download the dataset as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

Can I schedule this? Yes. Use Apify Schedules to snapshot the register on any cadence.

Is this affiliated with the Australian Government? No. This is an independent tool that reads only publicly available data.

🔌 Integrate with any app

Results are available through the Apify API, so you can pull them into any app, database, or workflow you already run.

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💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection.

🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form

⚠️ Disclaimer: independent tool, not affiliated with the Australian Government or the Office of Parliamentary Counsel. Only publicly available data is collected.