[1] Types of announcements in the Gazette include, appointments, promotions and transfers of persons to positions in the Australian Public Service (APS), previously "Commonwealth Public Service"; creation, dissolution and renaming of boards, departments and commissions within the APS; conferring of awards and honours to persons and organisations by the Government; calling of tenders and awarding of contracts by the Government.
[2] Since 1 October 2012, the Gazette is no longer physically published or compiled and now only consists of individually searchable notices online.
[2] The creation, publication and dissemination of a governmental gazette was one of a myriad of bureaucratic functions attendant on the Federation of Australia on 1 January 1901.
Their number and titles have not been constant; the current (2017) list includes:[13] APSjobs is a website which incorporates an electronic version of the APS Employment Gazette.
The Commonwealth Gazette for the years 1901–1957 has been digitised by the National Library of Australia and is available online through Trove.