Glossary of Terms
FRLI Help Pages

Please Note:

The Legislative Instruments Database (LID) web site (decommissioned on April 1, 2008) has been replaced by the Federal Register of Legislative Instruments web site. Your browser should automatically take you there in 10 seconds. If it doesn't then please go to www.frli.gov.au.

Glossary of Terms

Browse

The browse facility allows the user to search an alphabetical list of registered instruments contained in the FRLI database. The instruments are sorted alphabetically by title in groups of 50. Browsing is particularly useful when the name of the instrument is known. For more information see Browsing Help.

FRLI - Federal Register of Legislative Instruments

The Federal Register of Legislative Instruments (FRLI) is an electronic database of scanned legislative instruments and corresponding index entries, and Attorney-General's Certificates. The Register will be established by the Legislative Instruments Bill 1996 which is currently before Parliament. This new system replaces publication in the Gazette as the sole means for notifying the public at large that a particular instrument has been made. The Register is comprised of 4 Parts - Parts A, B and C and the Index.

FRLI Full Text

Any instruments made after the commencement of the Act and registered in Part A of the Register are required to have full text provided for them. To assist users in searching, full text has also been provided for some instruments registered in Part B under the early backcapture program provided for in the Bill. This allows users to search the text of the instrument.

FRLI Index

As part of the registration process, each instrument registered on the database will have an associated index record. This index contains such information as the FRLI number, name of the instrument, the title of the principal instrument, enabling legislation, enabling provision, a brief description of the instrument and other information depending on what part of the Register the instrument is registered in. Each index field can be searched and browsed.

FRLI Optical Images

Every instrument that is registered in FRLI is scanned into the database and the resulting image stored on an optical disk. The scanned image is an exact copy of the original instrument which was registered, and represents the authoritative version of an instrument. Note that, before images can be viewed, a suitable TIFF image viewer must be installed. Access to download sites for downloading a suitable image viewer is also provided. For more information see Image Viewing Help.

FRLI Web Server

The FRLI Web Server is a system within the Attorney-General's Department whereby LOIS users and the public (on public access stations located in OLD) are able to access information through NETSCAPE about instruments registered on the FRLI database. The FRLI Web Server allows all standard database searches and free text searches to be carried out through the one interface.

LOIS - Legal Office Information System

LOIS (Legal Office Information System) is the name of the internal computing system used by the Attorney-General's Department.

OLD - Office of Legislative Drafting

The Office of Legislative Drafting (OLD) is located in the Attorney-General's Department, cnr Kings Avenue and Macquarie Street, Barton ACT. OLD is responsible for administering all aspects of FRLI and maintaining the Register. All instruments to be registered must be lodged with OLD.
Part A

Part A will contain scanned images of registered instruments made after the commencement of the Legislative Instruments Act. Part A may also contain scanned images of instruments made but not finally gazetted before the Legislative Instruments Act comes into operation.

Part B

Part B will contain scanned images of originals (or copies) of instruments made before, and still in force as at, the commencement of the Legislative Instruments Act.

Part C

Part C will contain the scanned images of the Attorney-General's certificates issued under section 8 of the Legislative Instruments Act certifying whether an instrument is legislative or not. If the Attorney-General reconsiders an earlier decision, the original certificate will be replaced, but it will remain on the FRLI database and cross-referenced to the replacement certificate.

Search

Users can search the FRLI Index, and the full text of instruments where it exists, for specific words or phrases. This is possible as all data is indexed using a powerful full text index and retrieval package. Searches can be executed from either the Quick Search facility or Advanced Search facility (these links appear at the top of most FRLI screens). Use the online "Help" option to find out more on how to search the FRLI database.

Search Results Page

A Search Results page will result from any search in FRLI Web initiated using the Quick Search or Advanced Search facility. From the Search Results page you can click on the names of the instrument to see details of the index fields. Click on [First Hit] to find the first occurrence of your search word or phrase and click on [Image] to view the image if you have an Image Viewer installed. If the electronic text is available it will be located at the end of the index field information.

Search Term

A search term is any string of words, phrases, dates, symbols, operators and modifiers used to define the search. By using the additional search terms "and", "or", "near" and "not", the number of documents to be searched can be expanded or reduced.

Topic Query Language

Topic Query Language is the syntax used for entering search queries from a single word search to more complex phrase searches. These searches can be made on all index entries and on the full text (when available) using operators such as "and", "or", "near" and "not", and in the case of phrases, where words are near each other, in the same sentence and in the same paragraph.