Harvard Referencing (Australian Government Author-date style)

Hyperlink the title of the webpage.

Always include the date you accessed the site at the end of the reference.

Include the word ‘website’ after the name of the website, unless the name of the website is a URL, for example VIC.gov.au.

In-text citation:

Josiah Wedgwood & Sons was one of the first ceramic manufacturing companies to create a permanent museum of their works plus examples of early trials and experimental pieces (The Wedgwood Museum n.d.).

Reference list:

Author/organisation’s name (Year), Title of webpage hyperlinked, Name of Website website, accessed Day Month Year.

Valion Health (2025) Trauma informed care, Valion Health website, accessed 25 September 2025. 

If there’s no date?

Put n.d. where you would usually put the year. (This applies to all forms of resource where a date cannot be found.)

The Wedgwood Museum (n.d.), About us, Wedgwood website, accessed 8 November 2024. 

Points to remember:

• Use the same capitalisation as the organisation uses for the name of a website.
• If there is no author or organisation name associated with a webpage, use the title of the webpage instead
• If a website contains a year of creation as well as the year it was last updated, use the date it was last updated. 

PDFs

Don’t link to PDFs or other downloadable documents. Instead link to the page that hosts the document. If the PDF doesn’t have a landing page, link to the PDF and include ‘PDF’ in square brackets after the title. 

In-text citation:

Allwood et al (2006:16) list the main occupational health issues for workers in the clothing and textiles industry: hazardous chemicals, fibre dust, noise and monotonous repetitive processes.

OR

The use of child labour still remains a significant problem in the clothing and textile industry (Allwood et al. 2006). 

Reference list:

Allwood J M, Laursen S E, Malvido de Rodriguez, C and Bocken N (2006), Well dressed?: the present and future sustainability of clothing and textiles in the United Kingdom, Institute for Manufacturing website, accessed 20 December 2024. 

PowerPoint

If the PowerPoint doesn’t have a landing page, link to the PowerPoint and include ‘[PowerPoint slides]’ in square brackets after the title. 

In-text citation:

Geofroy Tory, the 16th century French designer was influenced by the work of Leonardo da Vinci and designed typeface based on the proportions of the human body (Chin 2006:7).

OR

Chin (2006:7) notes the influence of the architecture and works of Leonardo da Vinci on the typeface designs of Geofroy Tory.

Reference list:

Chin R (2006), History of typography: history of digital font, UCSB Computer Science website, accessed 20 December 2024. 

Point to remember:

• Both these web documents come from a tertiary institution (.edu or .ac).  This is a good indication that the information should be reliable. If you find a document on the Internet with only the author's name, try checking out the details of the author to see if he/she is a source you can cite confidently or if he/she is attached to any organisation, which may give you some idea of possible affiliation, background or bias. 

In-text citation:

Legislation introduced in 2010 ensures that visual artists receive five per cent of the resale price of any work sold for $1000 or more (Department of Communications and the Arts n.d.).

Reference list:

Author A or Agency Name (Year) Title of report, Name of Agency, Name of Government, accessed Day Month Year.

The Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts n.d., Resale royalty scheme, The Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts, Commonwealth of Australia, accessed 12 December 2024. 

Media releases:

Author A or Organisation Name (Day Month Year) Title of media release [media release], Organisation Name, accessed Day Month Year.

Albanese A and Rowland M (8 November 2024) Minimum age for social media access to protect Australian kids [media release], Prime Minister of Australia, accessed 5 December 2024.

If there is no title, include the first 10 words of the content followed by an ellipsis. Hyperlink the content or title to the original post and include the date you accessed the post.

Name of Page or Poster (Day Month Year) ‘Title or first 10 words of content of post ...’ [type of post], Page of Post, accessed Day Month Year.

In text references :

e.g. In a recent Facebook post, Services Australia (2024) ...

e.g. The launch of Tesla's first all-electric truck was tweeted by the CEO on April 2017 (Musk E).

Reference list

Anthony Albanese (8 November 2024) 'We're making 16 years old the minimum age for social...' [Facebook status], Anthony Albanese, accessed 15 November 2024. 

Arrenil (15 November 2024) 'How do you encourage end users to update software?' [online forum post], Reddit, accessed 15 January 2025. 

davestruestories (11 September 2024) 'I’ve recently become the father of a new baby daughter...' [Instagram post], davestruestories, accessed 20 December 2024. 

Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment (7 November 2024) ‘Luckily this passenger returning from Spain got the #biosecurity memo...’ [Tweet], Australian Government Agriculture and Water, accessed 14 November 2024. 

Notes:

·         Only use references from Facebook or Twitter if they are appropriate to academic work

·         If a proper name is not given, use the username

For videos published online, hyperlink the title of the video and file format. Include the date you accessed it at the end of the reference.

Reference List

Creator C or Owner of Video (Day Month Year) ‘Title of video’ [video], Name of Channel or Owning Organisation, Name of Website website, accessed Day Month Year.

Example:

Agriculture Victoria (9 September 2024) 'Bird swabbing procedure' [video], YouTube, accessed 25 January 2025. 

Centre for Invasive Species Solutions (17 May 2017) 'Wild dogs in Australia' [video], PestSmart, pestsmart website, accessed 2 February 2025.

Vinouze F and Mougin G (2024), 'AI at work: who runs the office?' [video], Samjohd, ClickView, accessed 6 March 2025. 

Author A (Day Month Year) ‘Title of article hyperlinked’, Name of Blog, accessed Day Month Year.

In-text citation:

Privacy Commissioner, Carly Kind says that more than a quarter of Australians (27%) feel that facial recognition technology is one of the biggest privacy risks faced today and only 3% of Australians think it’s fair for retailers to require their biometric information when accessing their services (2024).

Reference list:

Kind C (19 November 2024) ‘Facial recognition technology in retail settings: after the Bunnings decision', oaic.gov.au blog, accessed 21 December 2024.

List Wiki entries by the title of the entry, as the authorship is not specified.

In-text Citation

In 2015, Cas9 was used to modify the genome of human embryos for the first time (Wikipedia 2024). 

Reference List

Wikipedia (2024) Cas9, Wikipedia website, accessed 15 December 2024.

Sometimes you must cite multiple web pages with different URLs from the same website. Information from individual pages on a website can be distinguished from one another by inserting a lower case letter after the year.

In-text Citation

Students can borrow 15 items at a time (Box Hill Institute n.d.-a). The library produces online guides known as LibGuides (Box Hill Institute n.d.-b).

Reference List

Box Hill Institute (n.d.-a) Borrowing, StudentWeb website, accessed 5 December 2024.

Box Hill Institute (n.d.-b) How can I find subject guides for my course?, StudentWeb website, accessed 5 December 2024.

Note:

If the website includes a publication / page last updated year it would be 2020a, 2020b, 2020c, etc.