Hansard is the official report of the debates and proceedings of Parliament and its committees. In Queensland, it is published as Daily Hansard, Weekly Hansard, the annual bound volumes and on the Internet. The Hansard staff consists of six reporters, a chief reporter, two editors and two publishing and monitoring officers.

Members of Parliament may revise the transcriptions. Hansard is not a verbatim report of what is said in the Legislative Assembly. Rather, it is an accurate representation of speeches and statements devoid of redundancies, obvious grammatical errors, slips of the tongue and factual errors.

What is the origin of Hansard?

Hansard is commonly regarded as taking its name from Luke Hansard, who in the latter half of the 18th century wrote a newspaper column about the House of Commons titled The Journals of the House. In 1803, William Cobbett commenced the publication of reports, which were reprints of newspaper reports of the debates of the House of Commons.

Thomas Hansard took over from him. It was not until 1909 that the House of Commons first published its own reports of debates that were, strangely enough, called the Official Report and not Hansard. However, in Queensland, because of allegedly unreliable newspaper reports, Hansard was established in 1864, only five years after separation from New South Wales. By 1878, the Queensland Parliament was the first in the world to have a daily official report of the debates without any form of Government censorship.

For general inquiries email: hansard@parliament.qld.gov.au