Australian Law Mcp

io.github.ChangkeunJPublished by GitHub account ChangkeunJv0.1.5Updated Oct 24, 2026

Read Australian Commonwealth law as it stood on any date, and verify citations against the register

VerifiedSTDIODesktop onlyWeb Search & ScrapingKnowledge & Memory

Overview

AI-generated overview

Lets an assistant read Australian Commonwealth legislation as it stood on any date and verify statute citations against the official register.

What you can do
Serves live data from the Federal Register of Legislation, covering 130,000+ Commonwealth acts and instruments back to 1901. Tools include search_law and search_full_text for finding titles, get_law_text and get_law_as_at for current or point-in-time text, verify_citations to check whether cited acts and sections exist, get_amendment_status, compare_versions for changes between dates, and check_frl_health. Upstream failures are reported as UNVERIFIED rather than as a missing law.
When to use it
Useful when a task depends on the exact text of Commonwealth law in force on a past date, such as tax, visa, contract or court matters, or when citations produced by a model need checking against the authorised register before being relied on.
Requirements
Runs locally over stdio via npx and needs Node 20 or newer; a Dockerfile is provided as an alternative. No API key, account or sign-up is required. Network access to the Commonwealth legislation API is needed for live results.
Before you install
Results depend on the upstream register API, so network or API errors are returned as UNVERIFIED rather than NOT FOUND. Scope is Commonwealth legislation only: no state registers, case law or ATO rulings. Queries are sent to the Commonwealth's legislation API.

Installation

In SourceWeft

  1. Open Australian Law Mcp in the dashboard and add it to a workspace.
  2. Enable the server for the chats that should use its tools.

Desktop only via STDIO. STDIO servers start a local process, so they need the SourceWeft desktop host.

Other MCP clients

Follow the launch instructions in the repository.

README

australian-law-mcp

MCP server for the Federal Register of Legislation. Ask what Australian law said on any date, and check citations against the official register before you rely on them. No API key, nothing to sign up for.

Everything is served live from the Commonwealth's own legislation API: 130,000+ acts and legislative instruments, every compilation of each one, back to 1901. That register is the authorised source of Commonwealth law, and it publishes point-in-time versions natively — so get_law_as_at returns the text that was actually in force on the date you name, not a reconstruction.

Quick start

Claude Code:

claude mcp add australian-law -- npx -y australian-law-mcp

Claude Desktop, Cursor, or any other stdio MCP client:

json
{  "mcpServers": {    "australian-law": {      "command": "npx",      "args": ["-y", "australian-law-mcp"]    }  }}

Requires Node 20 or newer. Nothing else to install — npx fetches the package on first run.

There is a Dockerfile if you would rather not have Node on the host. The server speaks stdio, so the container needs -i:

docker build -t australian-law-mcp .docker run -i --rm australian-law-mcp

Tools

toolwhat it does
search_lawFind acts and instruments by name. Returns the title ids the other tools take.
get_law_textThe current compilation: the table of provisions, one section, or the full text paginated. Schedules are addressable too (section="Schedule 7"), which is where rate tables and forms actually live.
get_law_as_atThe same, but as the law stood on any past date.
verify_citationsPull statute citations out of text and check each against the register: does the act exist, is it in force, does the cited section exist. Upstream failures come back as UNVERIFIED, never as a missing law.
get_amendment_statusIn force or repealed, what the latest compilation incorporates, whether commenced amendments are still unincorporated, and what has amended it.
compare_versionsWhat changed between two dates: sections added, removed, reworded — or a line diff of one section.
search_full_textRelevance-ranked search over the body text of every title on the register.
check_frl_healthPing the register API so failures elsewhere can be attributed.

docs/tools.md has the parameters and a worked example of each, including what every tool does when it cannot answer.

Why point-in-time matters

Tax disputes, visa decisions, contracts and court matters turn on the law as it stood on a past day, and models reliably answer with today's law instead. The register keeps every compilation with exact in-force windows:

get_law_as_at titleId=C2004A03348 date=2017-01-05 section=3A→ As at 2017-01-05: Income Tax Rates Act 1986, Compilation No. 48  s 3A  Working holiday makers and working holiday taxable income ...

And verify_citations is the guard rail for the other direction — models inventing sections that were never enacted:

verify_citations text="See s 3A and s 999 of the Income Tax Rates Act 1986."→ [OK] Income Tax Rates Act 1986 [C2004A03348] — in force.    [OK] s 3A exists: "Working holiday makers and working holiday taxable income"    [NOT FOUND] s 999 — Provision 999 was not found in this compilation. It has      28 sections and 6 schedules. Closest by number: s 30, s 29, s 28

A real law reported missing is the worst failure a tool like this can have, so network and API errors are always reported as UNVERIFIED rather than NOT FOUND, and a section is only checked against an act when the citation actually binds the two together.

The same rule governs the text itself. The register has published in three different formats since 1901, and the oldest of them — as-made scans of acts from the federation era — carries no structural markup at all, only the numbering in the prose. Those are read from their own numbering, and the result is accepted only when the section numbers it recovers run in order from section 1. When they do not, the tool says the compilation could not be read rather than reporting an act with no sections or filing one section's words under another's number.

Scope

Commonwealth legislation only, by design. State registers either have no open API (Vic), sit behind bot challenges (NSW), or require registration (Qld). Case law databases (AustLII, Jade) do not permit automated access, so there is no case-law tool. ATO rulings are not machine-accessible. If any of that changes, the scope can grow.

Data source and licence

Legislative content comes from the Federal Register of Legislation API and is licensed CC BY 4.0 by the Commonwealth of Australia; every response that reproduces register content carries the register's required attribution. This project is independent: not affiliated with or endorsed by the Office of Parliamentary Counsel or the Australian Government. Output is legal information, not legal advice — the authorised version of any law is the one published on the register.

Code is MIT.

Development

npm installnpm test                        # build + unit tests (offline)node scripts/smoke.mjs          # live API smoke testnode scripts/protocol-test.mjs  # stdio round trip against the live API

Source: README.md at commit 659a444

Tools

0
SourceWeft has not started this package in its sandbox yet, so its tools are not known.

Version history

1
  1. v0.1.5LatestSep 16, 2026

Score

50% of the applicable checks met

How complete this listing is, computed from the registry entry, the endpoint and public sources. Not a rating of the server and not a statement that it is safe or working today: reachability is a dated check, and no installs or reviews go into the score.

  • Reached in the last 30 days25 pts

    Keep the endpoint answering the MCP handshake; SourceWeft probes it every 30 days.

  • Auth declared10 pts

    Declare the credential headers in the registry entry, or keep the endpoint answering the probe so its auth can be classified.

  • Tools listed15 pts

    Answer tools/list without a credential, or ship a package that starts in a sandbox without one.

  • DescriptionRequired15 pts
  • Logo10 pts
  • Documentation15 pts
  • License10 pts