git:20260719.1748a98 to git:20260912.a097ef8

4 added, 0 removed. Audit A to A.

---

name: legislation-nz

description: "Resolves, searches, and checks New Zealand Acts, Bills, secondary legislation, sections, point-in-time versions, and update feeds from official legislation.govt.nz and PCO sources. Use when a task needs NZ legislation text, exact section citations, current in-force status, amendments since a date, current Bills, or source caveats."

license: MIT

compatibility: "Requires Python 3.10+ and network access for live data"

metadata:

thecolab.category: "government"

thecolab.source_owner: "New Zealand Parliamentary Counsel Office"

thecolab.source_type: "official"

thecolab.auth: "mixed"

thecolab.access_mode: "public-api"

thecolab.data_class: "public"

thecolab.writes: "false"

thecolab.browser: "false"

thecolab.risk: "medium"

thecolab.cache_ttl: "24h"

thecolab.schema_version: "1"

thecolab.skill_type: "public-api"

thecolab.pack: "nz-public-data"

thecolab.source_url: "https://www.legislation.govt.nz"

thecolab.allowed_domains: "api.legislation.govt.nz,catalogue.data.govt.nz,www.legislation.govt.nz"

thecolab.last_verified: "2026-07-19"

thecolab.health: "gated"

thecolab.maintainer: "@adam91holt"

---

# New Zealand Legislation

## Goal

Use official New Zealand Legislation sources to resolve legislation records, quote current or point-in-time sections, list versions, inspect current Bills, and check recent publication/update feeds.

## Quick triage

Use this when:

- A user cites an Act or regulation by year/number and needs exact text

- A finding needs a current "as at" section citation from legislation.govt.nz

- A workflow needs to check versions or amendments since a date

- A user asks for Bills currently before Parliament

- A task needs to distinguish keyless web/XML access from the keyed PCO API

Do not use this for:

- Legal advice or statutory interpretation beyond quoting/checking source text

- Non-NZ legislation

- Unofficial commentary, case law, or policy guidance

## CLI

```bash

python3 skills/legislation-nz/scripts/cli.py search "Grocery Industry" --type act --json

python3 skills/legislation-nz/scripts/cli.py get-act 2003/52 --json

python3 skills/legislation-nz/scripts/cli.py get-section 2003/52 9C --json

+ python3 skills/legislation-nz/scripts/cli.py get-section 1993/105 "Schedule 7" --json

+ python3 skills/legislation-nz/scripts/cli.py get-section 1993/105 "Schedule 7 clause 1" --json

python3 skills/legislation-nz/scripts/cli.py versions 2003/52 --json

python3 skills/legislation-nz/scripts/cli.py updates --since 2026-07-01 --json

python3 skills/legislation-nz/scripts/cli.py list-bills --json

python3 skills/legislation-nz/scripts/cli.py sources --json

```

Commands:

- `get-act ACT_ID [--version YYYY-MM-DD|latest] [--sections-limit N|--all-sections] [--json]`

- `get-section ACT_ID SECTION [--version YYYY-MM-DD|latest] [--json]`

- `versions ACT_ID [--version YYYY-MM-DD|latest] [--limit N] [--json]`

- `updates --since YYYY-MM-DD [--type act|bill|regulation|secondary-legislation] [--limit N] [--json]`

- `list-bills [QUERY] [--all-statuses] [--limit N] [--json]`

- `sources` or `datasets` for source metadata and caveats

`ACT_ID` can be a `year/number` pair such as `2003/52`, a work/version id such as `act_public_2003_52`, or a canonical legislation.govt.nz URL.

+ `SECTION` accepts a body section label (`9C`), a schedule (`Schedule 7`, `sch 7`, `sched 7`), or a clause within a schedule (`Schedule 7 clause 1`, `sch 7 cl 1`). Schedules live in a separate XML tree from body sections, so they must be asked for by name. Bare numeric labels always resolve to the body section first — `get-section 1993/105 7` returns s7 "Control defined", not Schedule 7. Each result carries a `kind` field of `section`, `schedule`, or `schedule-clause`; schedule clauses also carry a `schedule` field. Check `kind` before quoting a result as a section.

## Source Behaviour

- `get-act` and `get-section` use keyless official XML format URLs from legislation.govt.nz.

- `search`, `versions`, and `list-bills` use keyless official legislation.govt.nz web pages by default.

- `updates` uses the official public web-feed generator and parses the returned Atom feed.

- `search --source api` uses the PCO developer API and requires `LEGISLATION_NZ_API_KEY` or `PCO_API_KEY`.

- Network calls time out after 10 seconds by default. Upstream blocks, bot challenges, missing API keys, and parse failures are surfaced as explicit non-stacktrace errors.

## Resources

- CLI: `scripts/cli.py`

- Smoke test: `scripts/smoke_test.py`

- Source notes and caveats: `references/api-notes.md`