Extract one: New Zealand Gazette: Gazette Admin User
Guide/SOP (page 7)
Publishing a Notice
When reviewing a submission for accepting a notice for publication, they key principles
are that there is a legislative requirement to publish a notice, ie a section of legislation
explicitly says that a notice must be published specifically in the Gazette, and the
submitter must have the authority to submit that notice.
You may need to check the Interpretation section of the legislation on what a ‘public
notice’ for example actually means (it might refer to a newspaper rather than the
Gazette).
The section of legislation may be clear on who must publish, eg the Minister, the Chief
Executive. If in doubt regarding the authorisation, check who administers the legislation
which is found at the beginning above the Contents of the legislation.
Only government agencies and private customers who have been validated can submit a
notice after signing up as a user. The validation process by the support team should
prevent unwanted submissions, however if it is picked up by the Gazette team during
processing, a rejected notice can be removed from the CMS (see Removing a Rejected
Notice).
If a submitted notice doesn’t have supporting legislation but was either intentionally or
mistakenly published previously, this does not automatically set a precedent to enable
to continue publishing those notices. A judgement call may need to be made based on
what and why a notice was published previously, if there were extenuating
circumstances (eg a notice being published in the Covid pandemic and the Gazette
judged the most appropriate channel for a specific notice) and whether notices can
continue to be published.
Some examples of notices where the legislation is not clear include notices under the
Trusts Act, which previously did align with an older version of the Act, and a decision is
made to accept similar notices under the new legislation. There may also be some
notices falling under international agreements, eg Trans-Tasman, which would make a
notice to be published in the Gazette appropriate.
Page 1 of 2
Extract two: New Zealand Gazette: Gazette Admin User
Guide/SOP (page 15)
Removing a Rejected Notice
To be updated post Phase 1
If an in progress notice which is being rejected from publication needs to be removed
from the CMS, eg if it is malicious or vexatious:
1. Search for notice in dash.gazette.govt.nz under Gazette>Notices
2. Enter a date in ‘Publication date’ and click ‘Save’ and ‘Publish’
3. Click on
. . . and select ‘Unpublish and archive’ and then ‘OK’
Notice will be removed from the database
The customer may also need to be removed from the CMS:
1. Delete user from the Security section
2. Delete organisation (if it exists, does not have published notices against and
should be removed) from Gazette>Customers
3. Delete person/user from Gazette>Customers>Persons
Extract three: New Zealand Gazette: Team User Guide (page
12)
Rejecting a Notice
If you have decided a notice cannot be published in the
Gazette (liaise with the Chief
Publisher if you are not certain)
1. Inform the customer the notice will not be published and the reason(s) why.
2. If Gazette officers have started working on the
Gazette notice (e.g. it has a notice
type, it is at typesetting status or beyond), follow the
Cancelling a notice steps
below.
Usually these notices will be marked as
No charge under
invoicing options on
the notice page.
3. If work has not started on the notice (e.g. its status is still at
Created), flag it with
the Gazette officers and let them know not to start work on it and let the Chief
Publisher know who will then decide whether to delete from the system.
Page 2 of 2
Document Outline
