Search Australian and New Zealand legislation. Jurisdictions: cth, vic, nsw, qld, sa, wa, tas, nt, act, federal, nz, other (all). Methods: auto, title (titles only), phrase (exact match), all (all words), any (any word), near (proximity), legis (legislation names). Use offset for pagination.
AI agents call search_legislation to retrieve information from AusLaw MCP without modifying anything — typically the context-gathering step in research, monitoring, and reporting workflows, before the agent takes action elsewhere.
This tool retrieves and queries Australian and New Zealand legislation data without creating, modifying, deleting, or executing anything. It is purely informational/retrieval-based, consistent with the 'Read' category for tools that query data with no side effects. The search methods and metadata extraction described are all passive operations.
From the tool's definition Tool description explicitly describes 'Search' functionality with various search methods (title, phrase, all, any, near) and pagination via offset. No modification, deletion, execution, or financial operations are mentioned or implied.
Documented attack patterns abuse exactly the kind of access search_legislation gives an agent:
PolicyLayer is an MCP gateway — it sits between your AI agents and AusLaw MCP, and nothing reaches the server without passing your rules. This is the rule we recommend for search_legislation:
{
"version": "1",
"default": "deny",
"tools": {
"search_legislation": {}
}
}search_legislation is read-only, so it stays allowed — but everything else on the server is denied unless you say otherwise.
Free to start. No card required.
Search Australian and New Zealand legislation. Jurisdictions: cth, vic, nsw, qld, sa, wa, tas, nt, act, federal, nz, other (all). Methods: auto, title (titles only), phrase (exact match), all (all words), any (any word), near (proximity), legis (legislation names). Use offset for pagination. It is categorised as a Read tool in the AusLaw MCP MCP Server, which means it retrieves data without modifying state.
Register the AusLaw MCP server in PolicyLayer and add a rule for search_legislation: allow, deny, rate-limit, or require approval. Point your MCP client at the PolicyLayer proxy URL and the rule is enforced on every call, before it reaches AusLaw MCP. Nothing to install.
search_legislation is a Read tool with low risk. Read-only tools are generally safe to allow by default.
Yes. Add a rate_limit block to the search_legislation rule in your PolicyLayer policy. For example, setting max: 10 and window: 60 limits the tool to 10 calls per minute. Rate limits are tracked per agent session and reset automatically.
Set action: deny in the PolicyLayer policy for search_legislation. The AI agent will receive a policy violation error and cannot call the tool. You can also include a reason field to explain why the tool is blocked.
search_legislation is provided by the AusLaw MCP server (russellbrenner/auslaw-mcp). PolicyLayer sits as a proxy in front of this server to enforce policies before tool calls reach the server.
Start from AusLaw MCP, add the rest of your stack, and see everything your agents can call. Then put policy on all of it.
Free to start. No card required.
18 AusLaw MCP tools catalogued and risk-classified — across an index of 43,000+ MCP servers.