What is a bill in the Australian Parliament?

A bill in the Australian Parliament is a proposed law, drafted in formal legal language, presented to either House for consideration. Bills must pass both the House of Representatives and the Senate and receive royal assent from the Governor-General to become an Act of Parliament with the force of law.

Bills come in several types. Government bills are introduced by ministers to implement government policy and make up the great majority of legislation passed. Private members' bills are introduced by individual members of Parliament outside the executive, including opposition and crossbench MPs, but are rarely passed into law without government support. Money bills (appropriations and taxation) must originate in the House of Representatives under section 53 of the Constitution and cannot be amended by the Senate.

Bills are drafted by the Office of Parliamentary Counsel, a specialist legislative drafting agency. Drafts go through formal departmental clearance, Cabinet approval (for government bills), and exposure-draft consultation in many cases. The bill is then introduced to either House (usually the House of Representatives for major legislation) and proceeds through prescribed stages of consideration including first reading, second reading, consideration in detail (or committee of the whole), and third reading.

Bills can be substantially amended during passage. The House and Senate can move amendments at the consideration-in-detail or committee-of-the-whole stage. Crossbench negotiations in the Senate regularly produce significant amendments to government bills before they pass. Substantive amendments require the bill to return to the other House for agreement, with disagreements between the Houses resolved through messages and, ultimately, through the section 57 double-dissolution mechanism in the most extreme cases. About 200 to 250 bills are passed by the federal Parliament each year, with parallel processes operating in every state and territory parliament.