Parliament’s Hansard History Just a Click Away

For the very first time in 36 years, the Tasmanian Parliament’s official record – Hansard – is now available online for the 12 years since its inception in 1979 until 1991, during which time only paper copies were available up until now.

Today I attended the official launch by the Governor of Tasmania, Her Excellency Professor the Honourable Kate Warner, of the retrospective digitalisation project in the Tasmanian Parliamentary Library.

The undertaking was initiated by Law Libraries Tasmania and involved the scanning of 300 volumes of Hansard, (amounting to 1409 days of Parliament transcripts in total) which were then uploaded to the Hansard website.

Previously, Hansard was only available digitally from 1992 onwards and prior to that, it was printed weekly and made available in major libraries.

As well as informing about the Tasmanian Parliament’s work including debate, speeches, votes, legislation and committee reports, the Hansard records and the public scrutiny they provide is an important part of our democracy and ensures our Parliament is open and accountable.

The digitalisation will provide easier access to Hansard for citizens, researchers, the legal profession, the media, Members of Parliament and for posterity.

Of course, the timeframe spans some important historic events such as the Power Referendum on the construction of a hydro-electricity dam on the Gordon River in 1981 which controversially led to the resignation of Premier Doug Lowe, the formation of the 1989 Labor-Green minority government after the Governor refused Premier Robin Gray’s request to dissolve parliament and call a fresh election on constitutional grounds, four state elections as well as the election of four Premiers and six Speakers.

I congratulate Law Libraries Tasmania on contributing to preserving our political history and thank Tasmanian Parliament staff for providing their assistance to this important project.

The Law Libraries Tasmania digitisation project was supported by the Law Foundation of Tasmania, with a $4,500 grant.

The website is available at http://www.parliament.tas.gov.au/hansardarchive/
Elise Archer, Speaker of the House of Assembly