Method
What has to be true before a line goes up
Nothing is published here until it has been *traced*. Back to the paper carrying it — a compiled Act, a transcript, a report with a date on the cover. Section number. Date. Finding. All three, or the page waits.
Order of sources
The Act first, in the form it was published
Statutes are read as currently compiled — consolidated text off the state register, compilation date printed on it. Not a summary. Not a client alert. Those point you to a section; they never say what it contains.
- The Act as compiled, with its compilation date noted.
- Explanatory memorandum and second-reading speech — why the provision exists.
- An inquiry's terms of reference, then transcripts, then the final report.
- Contemporaneous reporting, for one job only: fixing the date of an event.
Reporting puts a day on a calendar. It does not establish what a provision says.
If I cannot put a finger on the line in the compilation, the sentence does not exist yet.
A finding is not a headline
Sitting from 21 January 2020. Reporting 1 February 2021. Two findings to carry away: the operator unsuitable to hold the licence, and nineteen recommendations after it. The report's own words, and they appear here with the report's date beside them. 'Stripped of its licence' belongs to somebody else's copy. It shows up on this site only where the subject is the coverage itself, and it is marked when it does.
Two states, two sentences
A prohibition on publishing gaming-machine advertising, sitting in the New South Wales Act of 2001. A prohibition of its own kind in Victoria, drawn separately. Two jurisdictions, so two sentences here, each with its statute named. Open with 'in Australia' and the useful fact vanishes: one page, unchanged, lawful on this side of a border and an offence on that.
Off the page by standing policy
- Odds, returns, house edge.
- Strategy, systems, anything written to be played.
- How a game or a machine works.
- Venue recommendations, affiliate links, operator advertising.
- Any sentence that would work as advice instead of description.
The last item is the line that matters. This page can say what a provision states and when it commenced. It cannot say what to do about a licence condition or a show-cause notice. If the question is yours, the next call is a lawyer who takes instructions. A manual, not counsel.
Re-read on a schedule, corrected in place
Each page is re-read against the current compilation of every Act it cites twice a year, February and August, and again within a fortnight of an amendment commencing or an inquiry reporting. Fixes go in the body; a dated note at the foot carries the old wording. Nothing changes quietly.
Corrected 3 March. Previously read: appointed October 2021. Ray Finkelstein AO QC was appointed in late February 2021; the report came in October.
Disputed passages go to the editorial address with the reference attached — Act and section, or report and page.
Who pays for it
Written by one person. A Perth flat. Printouts stacked on a shelf, transcripts in a folder beside them. The hosting bill is hers. Nothing sold on these pages: no advertisement, no sponsor, no affiliate link, no operator or regulator anywhere behind the writing. Were that to change — a grant taken, a link paid for — the notice would sit at the head of this page with a date on it.