The government has repealed over 1,000 regulations and other instruments within the Attorney-General's portfolio in a major drive to cut red tape.
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the regulations removed by this instrument form part of the more than 12,000 regulations the government will be repealing this year.
Regulations repealed include the National Handgun Buyback Regulations 2003, which allowed the government to pay people for weapons that were outlawed. This program finished in 2004.
Other obscure instruments that have been repealed include marriage regulations that refer to unmarried men and women as "spinsters' and "bachelors".
The oldest of these laws was made in 1967 when Harold Holt was Prime Minister.
The repeals follow on from amendments made by the Legislative Instruments Amendment (Sunsetting Measures) Act 2012, which the government introduced and passed last year.
The repeal instrument is registered on the Federal Register of Legislative Instruments and takes full effect from today.
More than half of the government's reforms will save businesses $4 billion each year once fully implemented, according to estimates from the Productivity Commission.
