In March 2020, the New South Wales Government enacted the COVID-19 Legislation Amendment (Emergency Measures) Act 2020 to prepare New South Wales for the impacts of COVID-19 in line with health advice, and to take immediate steps to address existing barriers in our laws that were incompatible with social distancing policies.  This included amending the Electronic Transactions Act 2000 ('the Act') to create a regulation-making power that would allow for regulations to provide for alternative mechanisms for signing and witnessing documents.

Pursuant to these powers, the New South Wales Attorney-General introduced the Electronic Transactions Amendment (COVID-19 Witnessing of Documents) Regulation 2020, which allows for documents to be signed by one person in one place, and witnessed by another person in another place using facilities such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom or FaceTime.