Chief Parliamentary Counsel David Noble says official online legislation now includes legislation in HTML format.

This follows the Legislation (Official Electronic Versions) Notice 2015, which says that on and from 5 January 2016 official electronic versions of legislation will be issued in hypertext markup language (HTML) on the New Zealand Legislation website as well as in portable document format (PDF).

"[HTML] is the format that people see first when they search for Acts or Legislative Instruments on the New Zealand Legislation website. People can be confident that they are reading authoritative versions of legislation," Mr Noble says.

Previously, only online PDF versions with the New Zealand Coat of Arms (or printouts of those PDFs) had official status, together with printed legislation.

"Official legislation is taken by the courts to correctly set out the text, without further proof," Mr Noble says.