An act of parliament, as a form of primary legislation, is a text of law passed by the legislative body of a jurisdiction. In most countries with a parliamentary system of government, acts of parliament begin as a bill, which the legislature votes on. Depending on the structure of government, this text may then be subject to assent or approval from the executive branch.
YMCA Youth and Government (YaG), also known as Youth In Government, or Model Legislature and Court, is a program of the YMCA of the USA that allows middle and high school students to serve in model governments at the local, state, national, and international levels.
Frederick John Nile is an Australian former politician and ordained Christian minister. Nile was a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council from 1981-2023, except for a period in 2004. Nile was re-elected at the 1991, 1999, 2007, and 2015 state elections and served as the Assistant President of the Legislative Council between 2007 and 2019. Nile lost his seat at the 2023 New South Wales state election, after four decades of being in parliament.
In parliamentary procedure, a division of the assembly, division of the house, or simply division is a method of taking a vote that physically counts members voting.
Anthony Stephen Burke is an Australian politician serving as Leader of the House, Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for the Arts. He is a member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), and has served as member of parliament (MP) for Watson since 2004. He held cabinet positions in the governments of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard from 2007 to 2013.
The Parliament of Victoria is the bicameral legislature of the Australian state of Victoria that follows a Westminster-derived parliamentary system. It consists of the King, represented by the governor of Victoria, the Legislative Assembly and the Legislative Council. It has a fused executive drawn from members of both chambers. The parliament meets at Parliament House in the state capital Melbourne. The current Parliament was elected on 26 November 2022, sworn in on 20 December 2022 and is the 60th parliament in Victoria.
Penelope Gail Sharpe is an Australian politician. She has served as a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council since 2005, representing the Labor Party. Since March 2023, Sharpe is the Leader of the Government in the Legislative Council and the Vice-President of the Executive Council since Labor's election victory in March 2023, having previously served as leader of the opposition in the Legislative Council between 2021 and 2023.
The YMCA Youth Parliament is a YMCA run youth model parliament program. There is a YMCA youth parliament in every Australian State and Territory.
The YMCA Queensland Youth Parliament (QYP) is a nonpartisan YMCA run model parliament program and youth organisation, based in Queensland, Australia.
The Homosexual Law Reform Act 1986 is a New Zealand Act of Parliament that broadly legalised consensual sexual practices between men as well as consensual anal sex regardless of partners' gender. It removed the provisions of the Crimes Act 1961 that criminalised this behaviour. The legislation established a uniform age of consent, setting it at 16 for both same-sex and opposite-sex partners.
Ian Keith Hunter is an Australian politician, representing the South Australian Branch of the Australian Labor Party in the South Australian Legislative Council since the 2006 state election. Hunter served in the Cabinet of South Australia from October 2011 to 2018.
Same-sex marriage has been legal in Australia since 9 December 2017. Legislation to allow it, the Marriage Amendment Act 2017, passed the Parliament of Australia on 7 December 2017 and received royal assent from Governor-General Peter Cosgrove the following day. The law came into effect on 9 December, immediately recognising overseas same-sex marriages. The first same-sex wedding under Australian law was held on 15 December 2017. The passage of the law followed a voluntary postal survey of all Australians, in which 61.6% of respondents supported legalisation of same-sex marriage.
An Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom is primary legislation passed by the UK Parliament in Westminster, London.
Trevor John Khan is an Australian magistrate and former politician who served as a Nationals member of the New South Wales Legislative Council between 24 March 2007 and 6 January 2022, including for a time as Deputy President and Chair of Committees.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in the Australian state of New South Wales have most of the same rights and responsibilities as non-LGBT people.
Yvette Simone Berry is an Australian politician and Deputy Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory. She has been a Labor Party member for the seat of Ginninderra in the ACT Legislative Assembly since the 2012 ACT election. Berry is the daughter of Wayne Berry who was a Member of the ACT Assembly for Ginninderra from 1989 to 2008, Deputy Chief Minister from 1991 to 1994, Opposition Leader from 1997 to 1998 and Speaker from 2001 to 2008. Berry is the first family member of a current or previous member to be elected to the ACT assembly.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in the Australian state of Tasmania have the same legal rights as non-LGBT people. Tasmania has a transformative history with respect to the rights of LGBT people. Initially dubbed "Bigots' Island" by international media due to intense social and political hostility to LGBT rights up until the late 1990s, the state has subsequently been recognised for LGBT law reforms that have been described by activists such as Rodney Croome as among the most extensive and noteworthy in the world. Tasmania's criminal penalties for homosexual activity were the harshest in the Western world when they were repealed in 1997. It was the last Australian jurisdiction to decriminalise homosexuality after a United Nations Human Rights Committee ruling, the passage of federal sexual privacy legislation and a High Court challenge to the state's anti-homosexuality laws. Following decriminalisation, social and political attitudes in the state rapidly shifted in favour of LGBT rights ahead of national trends with strong anti-LGBT discrimination laws passed in 1999, and the first state relationship registration scheme to include same-sex couples introduced in 2003. In 2019, Tasmania passed and implemented the world's most progressive gender-optional birth certificate laws. In July 2023, the Tasmanian government officially included and also added "asexual or asexuality".
The history of same-sex marriage in Australia includes its express prohibition by the Howard government in 2004 and its eventual legalisation by the Parliament in December 2017. Although a same-sex marriage law was passed by the Australian Capital Territory in 2013, it was struck down by the High Court on the basis of inconsistency with federal law. The Court's decision closed the possibility of concurrent state or territory laws that would allow same-sex marriage where federal law did not. A law legalising same-sex marriage passed the Parliament on 7 December 2017 and received royal assent the following day.
Anthony Gerard Damien D'Adam is an Australian politician. He has been a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council since 2019, representing the Australian Labor Party.
The Parliament of New South Wales passed the Roads and Crimes Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 on 1 April 2022. The legislation amended the Roads Act 1993 and the Crimes Act 1900 to create new criminal penalties for protest activities. The incumbent Liberal-National Coalition Government introduced the Bill on 30 March 2022 to curtail the use of Non-violent direct action tactics by climate change protestors. The Parliament passed the Bill in the context of repeated disruptions to peak hour traffic on the Spit Bridge by Fireproof Australia activists and the use of Lock-on devices at Port Botany and in the Hunter Region by Blockade Australia. The NSW Greens and Animal Justice Party attempted to Filibuster the Bill in the New South Wales Legislative Council; however, the Government ultimately passed the legislation with the support of the NSW Labor Opposition.
