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The History of Hansard in New Zealand

The year was 1866 and something needed to change in the way the debates of the New Zealand Parliament were recorded.

Since Parliament’s inception on 24 May, 1854, daily, verbatim reporting of Parliament’s debates had been left to newspapers. This system came under criticism for producing biased, inaccurate, or unbalanced reports as newspapers struggled to provide enough staff to fully report proceedings.

Matters were not helped by the fact that some politicians owned, or wrote for, newspapers. In 1854 a group of members had formed themselves into a reporting club to take notes of speeches for newspapers. These reports were criticised as being biased and “embellished throughout with cheers” by members presenting themselves to the country in an overly favourable light.

After 12 years of wrangling, during which time a select committee attempted to entice newspapers to provide a more comprehensive service, the Government Printer gave an affordable estimate for printing the full debates in 1866.

So it was that between the end of the 1866 session and the beginning of the 1867 session New Zealand’s Hansard service was cobbled together on a shoestring. A newspaper editor called C.C.N. Barron put himself forward to manage a staff of four male reporters, some of whom were brought over from Australia. Speedy shorthand writers were obviously thin on the ground in New Zealand.

In the early days, individual reporters recorded 15 minutes of debate in shorthand at a time. That was transcribed with a humble pen as typewriters did not make their first appearance until 1886. The copy was then typeset and sent to the relevant member who returned it with corrections. It was typeset again and finally bound and distributed.

John E. Martin, in his book The House: New Zealand’s House of Representatives 1854-2004 described some of the challenges facing Hansard staff.

“Hansard reporters were a special breed. They had to be able to write accurate shorthand at speeds of 180 words per minute or more, and do so with intelligence. It was not a matter of mechanical verbatim reporting. Many fast reporters found that they were unable to cope with the reality of speeches in the House. The speeches were at one extreme roughly fashioned, poorly expressed, ungrammatical and repetitive, and at the other erudite and full of classical allusions, quotations and abstruse phrases. They were punctuated with interjections and procedural matters. Reporters had to exercise discrimination and editorial discretion simultaneously as they penned their shorthand. They had to be knowledgable about political affairs, the procedures of Parliament, and the diverse allusions sprinkled through speeches.”

It would be nice to say that all arguments with members over the content of their reported speeches ceased with the establishment of the Hansard office, but that was not the case. Battles continued to rage, summarised in “The Member’s Lament”, which was written by one frustrated MP: “I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure that you realise that what you heard is not what I meant.”

Reporters had to be fairly hardy. This was illustrated during the notorious stonewall of 1875 when W.L. Rees spoke for more than 24 hours without a break, beginning shortly after 3am on 15 September. The Hansard reporters eventually “expired” and retreated from the Chamber, as did the Speaker. We hope that they recovered.

Presumably because of such happenings, women were considered “physically and temperamentally unsuited to the long, late hours of concentrated work”, although they were employed as typists, off and on, from the end of World War I.

However, by the 1960s, recruiting men with the necessary shorthand speeds for the job—many speakers at the time exceeded 200 words per minute—was proving increasingly difficult and when two jobs for reporters were advertised in May 1962 the 10 applicants were all female. Two women were hired from the Hansard typing team. Gradually the gender balance tipped until the last male reporter left Hansard in 1979. In 1980 Eileen Edwards became the first female Editor of Debates.

As the social structure of the office changed, so too did the technology used to record debates. Tape recorders were introduced in 1964, to be used as a back-up to shorthand. The first word-processors were introduced in 1991, and in 1992 reporters were no longer required to take the whole debate down in shorthand, although interjections are still recorded in shorthand. In 1993 reporters stopped dictating to typists and began to type their own turns. Digital audio recording was introduced in December 2000 to replace tape recorders.

The changes continue. Plans are in the pipeline to pilot voice recognition software later in the financial year, with a view to purchasing the software the following year. We are also investigating ways to speed up the production of Hansard without compromising quality. Reporting Services, the office that produces Hansard, plans to televise Parliament from mid-2005, and to present televised footage on the parliamentary website to enable better accessibility to Parliament for all New Zealanders.

Now what would Mr Barron think of that?

Information for this article came from John E Martin’s book The House: New Zealand’s House of Representatives 1854-2004, and a speech Dr Martin gave on 27 August 2004 on the history of Hansard.