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	News from AustLII (1 July 2002)
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CONTENTS

SCALEPlus scales back
Hong Kong Goes Live
SA Workcover Levy Review Panel
New External Relations Manager
DIAL
Notification Service
Upcoming Conferences
Recent Additions

SCALEPLUS SCALES BACK
After many years of providing the world with a valuable online collection of Australian legislation and case law, SCALEPlus is removing all case law and State legislation. By July 2002, it will only hold databases of the legislation of the Commonwealth and non-self governing territories. This leaves AustLII as the only free online legal resource which spans both legislation and caselaw for all Australian jurisdictions. AustLII is working with SCALEPlus to ensure that data previously available through SCALEPlus is made available to AustLII. SCALEPlus has published a timetable <http://scaletext.law.gov.au/mainpage.html>;) for its rationalisation program.

HONG KONG GOES LIVE
A new site for Hong Kong legal resources has been opened at <http://www.hklii.org/>; Although in its infancy, the site already has valuable resources and will be expanded to include legal resources relating to the WTO. "Free access to law via Internet as a condition of the rule of law in Asian societies: HKLII and WordLII", a paper, delivered to the 4th Conference on Asian Jurisprudence, gives more details
http://www2.austlii.edu.au/~graham/publications/2002/HKLII_WorldLII_Jan02/HKLII_WorldLII.html)

SA WORKCOVER LEVY REVIEW PANEL
The decisions of the South Australian Workcover Levy Review Panel are now online at AustLII and can be found at <http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/sa/SAWLRP/>;. AustLII now provides access to the decisions of 76 Australian courts and tribunals.

NEW EXTERNAL RELATIONS MANAGER
AustLII has appointed Guy Harley as the new External Relations Manager to replace Gordon Finlayson who has departed for London. Guy is a graduate in Law from the University of Adelaide and holds a Master of eBusiness degree from the University of South Australia. Prior to AustLII Guy worked as a barrister and solicitor in private practice in Adelaide. His responsibilities at AustLII include managing and developing AustLII's partner relationships, grant applications, new alliances and quality control. You can find out more about the staff at AustLII ( <http://www.austlii.edu.au/austlii/personnel.html>; )

DIAL
AustLII has just completed its latest round of training for Project DIAL. During May and June, training session were completed in Cambodia, Pakistan and Vietnam.

DIAL (Development of the Internet for Asian Law) is a project funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) (http://www.adb.org/) under a three year US$600,000 Law and Development Regional Technical Assistance (RETA) grant from July 1999-2002. The project aims to make it easier to find and use legislation-related materials on the Web. DIAL is being carried out by an international project team from eight countries. The Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) provides the host computer facilities, hands-on training, technical development and content development for DIAL. The DIAL team provides in-country training in internet legal research to government lawyers and legal institutions in the following countries: the People's Republic of China, Mongolia, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia and Viet Nam.

The DIAL home page (http://www.austlii.edu.au/links/dial/) provides more information about the project including access to the DIAL News archive, a monthly bulletin which features new legislation, research tips, major legal websites on the Web and other new material added to the World Law catalog.

NOTIFICATION SERVICE
A number of AustLII users have asked whether AustLII will be providing a notification service similar to that offered by SCALEPlus in which users were notified of changes to nominated legislation. Unfortunately, AustLII is unable to do so as the resources required for such a service are considerable. If we were to utilise our existing resources to provide the service then this would lead to a serious degradation of our existing services.

We are currently investigating methods by which this service may be offered in the future.

In the meantime, we can only suggest that users keep a list of legislation that affects them and periodically visit our site. The date that an Act or Regulation was last updated usually, but not always, appears near the top of the document. In addition, the Notes feature can be sued to access the legislation full legislative history.

UPCOMING CONFERENCES
4th International Conference on Law via the Internet. October 2, 3 & 4 Montreal Canada. See http://www.canlii.org/conf2002/en/

Technology: What can it do for you? 3rd Australian Institute of Judicial Administration Technology for Justice Conference 20-22 October 2002, Sydney. See http://www.aija.org.au/tech3.htm for more details.

RECENT ADDITIONS
Risk v Northern Territory of Australia [2002] HCA 23 (30 May 2002) <http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/high_ct/2002/23.html>; This case deals with a claim under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (Cth)
(http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/alrta1976444/) to areas of the seabed of bays and gulfs within the limits of the Northern Territory. The High Court considered whether the seabed of bays and gulfs amenable to claim and whether "land in the Northern Territory" includes the seabed of bays or gulfs.

Timor Sea Treaty
<http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/dfat/special/etimor/index.html>; One of the first acts of the new nation of East Timor was to sign a treaty with Australia concerning the Timor Sea.

SGH Ltd v Commissioner of Taxation [2002] HCA 18 (1 May 2002) <http://www.austlii.edu.au//au/cases/cth/high_ct/2002/18.html>; The High Court considered whether a building society controlled by a State instrumentality is the State for the purposes of s114 of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia and therefore exempt from the imposition of a Commonwealth tax. The Court held that it was not.

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End of AustLII News