Australia has plenty of laws that have quietly outlived the circumstances that created them, sitting on the books decades – sometimes over a century – after anyone imagined they’d still be relevant. The catch is that a huge number of the “weird Australian laws” lists circulating online are actually wrong: laws that were repealed years ago, or that never existed in the first place, endlessly copy-pasted from one clickbait article to the next.

We went back to the actual legislation to separate fact from fiction. Here’s what’s genuinely still on the books – and a few famous “laws” that turned out to be nothing more than internet folklore.

Real laws still in force

Victoria takes piracy very seriously

Tucked inside Victoria’s Crimes Act 1958 is an entire division dedicated to piracy – genuinely still in force today. Under section 70B, a person on board an Australian ship who “turns pirate” and runs off with the vessel, voluntarily hands it over to pirates, or even carries “any seducing message from any pirate, enemy or rebel,” faces up to 20 years’ imprisonment. Section 70C separately makes trading with pirates an offence carrying up to 10 years. It’s a genuine relic of the Age of Sail, never removed as the Act was consolidated and amended over the decades, and it remains part of Victorian law today.

An “electrified briefcase” is a specifically regulated weapon in WA

Under Western Australia’s Weapons Act 1999 and its accompanying regulations, a briefcase or suitcase “commercially designed and made to discharge” an electric shock is formally classified as a controlled weapon. Carrying one without lawful excuse carries real penalties – up to two years’ imprisonment and a $24,000 fine. It sounds like something from a spy film, but it’s a genuine, currently enforceable provision of WA law, complete with its own specific regulation.

Disrupting a wedding or funeral in South Australia carries real penalties

Under section 7A of South Australia’s Summary Offences Act 1953, intentionally obstructing or disturbing people attending a religious service, wedding or funeral is an offence carrying a maximum penalty of $10,000 or two years’ imprisonment. Unlike some of the more obscure examples on this list, this one isn’t a forgotten curiosity – it’s a genuinely current, actively enforceable law, and a reminder that “old” doesn’t always mean “obsolete.”

Commonly repeated “laws” that are actually myths (or repealed)

The Western Australian “50kg of potatoes” law did exist, but it was formally repealed in 2021 following the wind-up of the Potato Marketing Corporation of Western Australia. Anyone still sharing this one is a few years out of date.

The Queensland taxi hay bale law is one of the most widely repeated furphies on the internet – except it was never a Queensland law at all. The genuine version applied to horse-drawn taxis in Melbourne, a relic of the era before motor vehicles, and it was repealed back in 1980.

Victoria’s “no hot pink hot pants after midday on Sundays” and the requirement for a “neck-to-knee” swimsuit at Melbourne’s Brighton Beach are both entirely fictional. Legal researchers who’ve gone looking for the underlying legislation have found no such laws exist, or ever existed, in Victorian law.

The takeaway

Australia’s law books genuinely do contain some delightfully odd survivors from earlier eras – you just have to know where to look, and be willing to check the primary source rather than trust the fortieth listicle repeating the same unverified claims. Next time a “did you know” law fact does the rounds at a barbecue, it’s worth a quick check before repeating it – chances are decent it’s either years out of date, or was never actually true at all.