The Daily Grind

The New Zealand Parliament runs a single House, which sits in 3 to 4-week blocks from February to December. Normal sitting hours are 2pm to 10pm on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and 2pm to 6pm on Thursdays.

The nuts and bolts of it

We have 14 Hansard reporters, but on an ordinary sitting day there are only 10 reporters “on the book”. During urgency the number on the book goes up to 11. Of the 14 reporters, nine are trained sub-editors and take turns to subedit copy rather than transcribe.

We start each day with 5-minute turns between 2pm and 3pm, then 7.5-minute turns from 3pm to 3.30pm, and 10-minute turns thereafter, except on Thursdays when the turns stay at 7.5-minutes. The shorter turns enable us to process question time copy so that it is up on the website by 5.30pm.

What we produce and when

Transcripts of question time—which is held between 2pm and 3.30pm every sitting day, except when the House is in urgency—are up on the parliamentary website (http://www.clerk.parliament.govt.nz/hansard/Hansard.aspx) by 5.30pm the same day.

The advance copy of Hansard (the initial transcript for one day of debate) is produced within four working days after the debate in the House.

The Hansard “pink”—the bound version of one week’s debates—is printed within two weeks.

The bound version of each session is produced after the session’s close.

Technology

Debate in the Chamber is digitally recorded and we use a playback system called FTR. Interjections are recorded in shorthand by eight reporters who have the requisite shorthand skills. They monitor the turns for those of us who do not know shorthand, and who do not go into the House.

In early 2003 we introduced the Hansard Production System (HPS), which replaced the old DOS-based computer programme we had worked with since the early 1990s. There are plans afoot to introduce voice recognition software in the next financial year.