The Law Handbook 2024

xi Citation of Acts Each Act and regulation is given a full citation and a short title (noted in bold) when it is first mentioned in any chapter. After the full name of the Act or regulation is mentioned, it is referred to by its short title only. If the short title alone is insufficient to distinguish a state Act from a Commonwealth Act of the same name – for example, both Victoria and the Commonwealth have a Freedom of Information Act 1982 – the short title will be accompanied by either a (Vic) or (Cth) (e.g. FoI Act (Vic)). If a single Act is referred to throughout a chapter, this will be mentioned at the beginning of the chapter. If several Acts are dealt with in a chapter, a reference to a section of an unspecified Act (e.g. s 42) should be read as a reference to the most recently named Act in the text that came before it. A note about penalty units Both state and Commonwealth penalty units (pu) are referred to in The Law Handbook . Victoria Under state law, since 1 July 2004, the value of a penalty unit for a financial year has been fixed by the Treasurer under section 5(3) of the Monetary Units Act 2004 (Vic). From 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2024, the value of one penalty unit (pu) is $192.31 under Victorian state law. Commonwealth The value of a Commonwealth penalty unit is prescribed by the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth) and is currently $313 for offences committed on or after 1 July 2023. A note about the COVID-19 pandemic On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak to be a global pandemic. The impact of COVID-19 on legal procedure has been significant and unprecedented. In this book, ‘COVID-19 notes’ have been added where relevant.