Additional Information

About this book

Welcome to the 2025/2026 edition of The Law Handbook, published by the Fitzroy Legal Service. The Law Handbook contains a summary of the areas of law that most often affect people in everyday life. It is designed for people who want to be better informed about the law and more self-reliant in using it. The Law Handbook is also a useful resource for lawyers, teachers, students and community workers – or people who are researching a particular area of law.

The Law Handbook follows a tradition established by the Legal Resources Book in 1977. We acknowledge the efforts of past and ongoing contributors – all practising professionals with specific expertise in their fields of law – and value readers’ suggestions for further improvements.

The law is constantly changing. It can be problematic and sometimes expensive to rely on out-of-date information. That’s why we produce a new edition each year. All chapters have been reviewed and, where required, updated. The Law Handbook also includes comprehensive subject, case and legislation indexes.

Except where stated, the law in this edition of The Law Handbook is considered current as at 1 September 2024. Areas where the law is likely to change in the future have been flagged. To find out if particular laws have changed, you can obtain free information from community legal centres and Victoria Legal Aid (see Chapter 2.3: Legal services that can help).

Note that chapters have been grouped into related topics covering particular areas of daily life. For example, the topic of “managing your money” includes chapters on social security, debt, bankruptcy, superannuation and taxation.

Using this book

The Law Handbook covers a wide range of legal issues. While it may not provide you with a solution to every problem, it contains enough information to help you understand your position and to know when and where to get more assistance. There are several ways to access the information you want:

Contents list: The book is divided into 12 sections, each containing various chapters which cover a particular area of law. If you have a specific problem, the contents list should take you to the chapter dealing with that general area.
Glossary: Sometimes it is difficult to avoid using technical legal terms. These are usually explained when first used in each chapter, but they have also been listed in the glossary. Words that are included in the glossary are underlined when they are first used in each chapter.
Index: If you do not know where to start looking for the information you want, go straight to the index at the end of the book. This contains references to the main topics covered in The Law Handbook and includes references to Acts, organisations and all specific items of interest.
Abbreviations: Any special abbreviations and acronyms used in the text are explained when first used in each chapter.

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 2025 to 30 June 2026, the value of one penalty unit (pu) is $203.51 under Victorian state law.

Commonwealth

The value of a penalty unit is prescribed by the Crimes Act 1914 and is currently $330 for offences committed on or after 7 November 2024.

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 was significant and unprecedented. In previous editions of the book, ‘COVID-19 notes’ were added where relevant. Most of these notes have been removed in the 2025/2026 edition.

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