Topics of Interest

The ALRC DataHub offers opportunities to explore how lawmaking by the Australian Parliament and Executive Government has changed over the past 120 years. The DataHub’s Topics of Interest series of webpages provides case studies in how data can be used to tell original stories about law, law-making, and legal history. The data is a reminder that Australia’s history is, in part, written in and through its laws.

Example case studies — using the data

  • Lawmaking in COVID-19 demonstrates how data sets published on the DataHub can be used to examine the impact of major events on lawmaking. The page shows how data sets on the making of legislation can be combined with other data to identify and visualise the volume of pandemic-related legislation, and to consider the impact of the pandemic on lawmaking in relation to various subject-matter and by different lawmakers and administrators.
  • Law, War, and Peace demonstrates how data sets published on the DataHub can be used to understand lawmaking at particular moments in time and in relation to particular subject matters. The page examines lawmaking during the First and Second World Wars, as well as in relation to veterans and defence legislation more broadly. The page also illustrates how the data sets published on the DataHub can be further mined for insights, such as by searching for legislation related to ‘terrorism’ and ‘sanctions’.
  • Lawmaking by Parliamentary Term demonstrates how data sets published on the DataHub can be analysed on different time scales, in this case by term of the Australian Parliament. The page offers a roadmap for researchers to consider why and how Parliaments prioritise lawmaking in relation to different subject matter, to identify key legislation produced in Parliamentary terms, and to consider why the production of delegated legislation can vary between Parliamentary terms. The page also draws on Bills-related data to show the proportion of successful government and private members’ Bills per term, showing how the data sets published on the DataHub provide an empirical basis for investigating which Bills succeed and fail, and why.

Example analysis: The financial services legislative universe

Figure 1 is a visual representation of all in force corporations and financial services legislation. The yellow points are Acts while the blue points are legislative instruments. The lines indicate whether one piece of legislation is authorising, amending, or modifying another piece of legislation. The Figure was created using the corporations and financial services network data set and visualised with the open-source software Cytoscape.

Figure 1: Relationships between in force corporations and financial services legislation