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NEW SOUTH WALES
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 Parliament of New South Wales: www.parliament.nsw.gov.au Email to Editor of Debates: judith.somogyi@parliament.nsw.gov.au Telephone: 9230 2233; Fax 9230 2921
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A LITTLE HISTORY - The Parliament of New South WalesThe Parliament of New South Wales is Australia's first and oldest parliament. It consists of two democratically elected Houses: the Legislative Assembly, with 93 members, and the Legislative Council, with 42 members. Legislative Assembly members are elected every four years under an optional preferential voting system. Legislative Council members serve eight-year terms, with half the membership standing for re-election every four years. New South Wales was founded as a British convict colony in 1788. Its
first permanent hospital was built in 1816. To fund it Governor Lachlan Macquarie let the
building contractors import and sell 60,000 gallons of rum. Two of the three original
buildings of the Rum Hospital [as it was known] survive, and one is the central façade of
today's Parliament House. |
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| By 1824, with many free settlers in the
colony, a small Legislative Council was established to assist the Governor in a first step
towards democratic government in Australia. In 1829 the enlarged Legislative Council began
to meet in the Chief Surgeon's Quarters, and from that time those quarters have remained
the centre of the New South Wales Legislature. In 1843 and again in 1856 legislative
chambers were added to meet the needs of the increasingly democratic colony. 1 |
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Through the years offices, dining rooms, a library and other facilities have been added. The construction of a complete new building kept being abandoned because of cost. Finally, in 1974 rebuilding began and within 10 years a 12-storey block linked by a fountain court to the preserved Macquarie Street façade replaced the former jumble of buildings. The historic chambers, library, foyers and former Surgeon's Quarters have been meticulously restored and remain today as the heart and public face of the New South Wales Parliament House. THE ROLEOur role in New South Wales Hansard is to report the proceedings of the Legislative Council, the Legislative Assembly, parliamentary committees, ministerial and special conferences. We have no editorial policy but the pursuit of accuracy. We are not hampered by conceptions of news value, and no bias towards either persons or parties enters our reports. Our primary objective is to provide an impartial, accurate and timely report of the Parliament.
THE NEW SOUTH WALES PARLIAMENTARY REPORTING STAFF |
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Sydney Morning Herald journalists reported the proceedings of the first bicameral Parliament of New South Wales, which met on 22 May 1856. The Sydney Morning Herald published the reports of the debates until 1879, when under the direction of the Colonial Secretary Sir Henry Parkes, shorthand writers were appointed to report the proceedings of Parliament. In 1883 Premier Sir Alexander Stuart placed the Principal Shorthand Writer and his staff under the administrative control of the Presiding Officers of the Parliament. These days 24 staff report to the Editor of Debates: a deputy editor, a senior subeditor, 4 subeditors, 2 senior reporters, 12 reporters, an administrative assistant, a Hansard formatter and two word processing operators. OUR HANSARD PROCESSFor more than a century the basic system of pen shorthand
reporters dictating to typists using manual typewriters remained unchanged. Use of
electric typewriters was the first step in the progressive adoption of new technology. The
next step occurred after the advent of wordprocessors. Today our pen reporters use voice
recognition technology to dictate directly to computers. |
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When two Houses sit a team of seven reporters is rostered to report the proceedings in each House. Similarly, the subeditors form two teams. Reporters work in the House for 10 minutes at a time, commonly referred to as a "turn", and subeditors work in the House for 30 minutes at a time. The subeditors subsequently edit the turns of the three reporters who were in the House with them, and then process the turns through the Hansard network production system. The last subeditor on each House electronically collates the transcript and posts it on our Intranet site, where it is automatically replicated to the Internet. The subeditor also sends an electronic copy to Parliamentary Printing Services to print the daily proof, which is available early next morning both in hard copy and on the Parliament's Intranet and Internet web sites. The next day the reporters and the subeditors proofread the daily proof and check it against the Minutes and Votes of the respective Houses. Members have two days after giving their speech in which to submit their corrections. The corrected pamphlet is published about a week after the sitting, and bound volumes are published yearly. DEBATESParliamentary Debates [Hansard] for the current Parliament, which commenced on 11 May 1999, are available at www.parliament.nsw.gov.au. Hansard for previous parliaments is available in bound volumes. In addition, proceedings back to 1991 are stored electronically on archive directories.The proceedings of each sitting day of both the Legislative Assembly and the Legislative Council may be viewed on the Internet as either separate articles representing an item of business or as full text. For ease of use an index has been set up for articles: by date, by subject matter, by name of member making the speech, and by bill name. Second reading speeches on bills are also linked, as is information tracking the progress of bills through both Houses. During the sittings of Parliament the proof version of the day's Hansard in full text format is available generally within a few hours of the adjournment of the Parliament. The article version is available from 10.00 o'clock the next morning. Site copyright © APHEA 2003. |
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Since 1987 we
have also appointed reporters who use Stenograph and Palantype machine shorthand. Machine
shorthand allows the production of a computer assisted transcript [CAT] without the
reporter having to dictate to a word processing operator or a voice recognition system.