Recent work has argued that Australian statute law is complex and not just complicated. The roots of this complication lie in path dependence of legislative process, and 'monster acts' which become pillars of an interconnected system of law. Its consequence is statute law in which the letter of the law is easy to amend, but policy is not; where outcomes are inherently difficult to predict; and where in some cases new legislation has effects precisely opposite to its intent. Demonstrating that this is an issue is only a first step, and complexity is frequently a feature of policymaking. This presentation sketches some of the previous responses to the issue (which speak mainly to complication, not complexity), and proposes some plausible avenues for research to address the problem of complexity in law more directly.
