Search help

What has been indexed?

The search engine finds pages on the Federal Court of Australia website including the full text of judgments. The search engine does not search other sites on the Internet. HTML documents and PDF documents are indexed.

How to Make a Simple Search

The first part of the form prompts you to enter a query. The simplest query is one in which you type a single word. This word is then matched against an index. Remember that almost every word on a page is indexed, so try and choose a word or words that will be specific to the area of interest. For instance, the word "judgment" alone will exist on a great many pages. Some words, e.g. "Federal", or "Court" are so common that you should not use them in simple queries.

If matches for your query are found, a list of those pages corresponding to the query will be displayed. If your query matches more than 10 results, the results will be displayed 10 at a time on separate pages.

If your query returns no results, check that you have used the correct spelling. Misspelling a search word is a common cause of failure to find what you are looking for.

To allow for the variable spelling of certain words, especially differences between USA and UK spellings, a set of synonyms is used. Thus a search on "colour" will find pages containing either "colour" or "color".

The search engine will also look for similar words. For example, if you search for "hill" the search results will include matches on the words 'hill or hilled or hilling or hiller or hills'.

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Searching on Part of a Word

A general search on a substring, that is for all words containing a given string, is not permitted, but it is possible to search for all words starting with a given string. For example a search for telep* would search for pages containing "telephone", "telephones", "teleprinter", etc.

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Searching on More than One Word

For a phrase search, select 'AND'. Thus, if you enter the phrase "sexual discrimination in the workplace", then the search facility will return all pages which contain all three words "sexual", "discrimination" and "workplace" in any order. (The words 'in' and 'the' will not be searched because they are very common words and are therefore not indexed). In many cases, however, this is sufficient to find the relevant pages.

Note that if the Match option is set to "ANY", then the search facility will return a list of pages which contain any of the words entered in the Search word(s) text box. This is useful when you have two or more alternative words to search for.

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Boolean searching

Two or more search terms (words) can be combined in a single query using Boolean logic. Used with care, this is a very powerful technique for improving the search result. Boolean queries involve combining terms using the special logical operators OR, AND, NOT, and parentheses.

The Match option must be set to "Boolean", and a valid Boolean expression must be entered in the Search word(s) textbox. For example if you type in the following words into the Search word(s) textbox:

cat not dog

the search results will contain a list of all those pages that contain the word "cat" and do not contain the word "dog";

cat and dog

the search results will contain a list of all those pages that contain both the words "cat' and 'dog';

tea and (milk or cream) not sugar

the search results will contain a list of all those pages that contain the word "tea", and either or both the words "milk" and "cream", but exclude those pages which also contain the word "sugar".

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Restricting searches

The scope of your search can be restricted to sub sections of the Court's website. To search across the whole website including judgments, leave the selected default value of "Federal Court and Judgments Sites". Judgment searches can be further restricted by selecting judgments handed down between the years listed.

You can also choose to exclude the judgments from a search.

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Sort Results Option

The 'Sort by' option allows for the option of listing the pages that have been found in alphabetical order by title, or in order of the weighted score for relevance of the search.

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Limitations

Every effort has been made to include all judgments handed down after 1995. Prior to 1995, inclusion of judgments is selective depending on whether they were reported and whether an electronic version of the text of the judgment is available.

In some cases there is a link to an 'RTF' version of the judgment in the top right hand corner of the page. The RTF view should be used for printing in preference to the HTML view as it retains the original formatting, including page numbering.

If your search yields no results you can ask the Court using the 'query' email address at the bottom of this page.