3.2 Hansard
Parliamentary Debates are the full edited reports of the speeches of Members of the Legislative Assembly. These debates are substantially verbatim reports that are edited with repetitions and redundancies omitted and mistakes corrected. Parliamentary Debates are commonly known as Hansard, which was the name of the printing firm that began printing the House of Commons debates in the early nineteenth century. As well as containing the reports of Members' speeches, Hansard also contains references to petitions presented and received, Notices of Motion, questions with and without notice and the answers thereto, and details of divisions. While Hansard contains most of the matters included in the Votes and Proceedings, Hansard does not constitute the official record of the proceedings of the House. The production of Hansard is the responsibility of the Chief Hansard Reporter and staff.
Although only the House itself can exercise control over the content of the Hansard reports, rulings from the Chair and custom and practice have formed the guidelines for what is deleted from and what is incorporated in the debates of the House. Interjections to which the Member speaking does not reply are not included in the Hansard record. Questions not replied to or ruled out of order are omitted from Hansard. The Speaker has a responsibility to ensure that no objectionable material is included in the Hansard record.
The House has always had procedures for the incorporation of unread material into Hansard. However, the final decision as to what is allowed to be incorporated (such as graphs, tables or figures, etc.) rests with the Speaker. The general rule applied nowadays is a limit of three or four pages of material essential to the speech of the member. It is also the practice that Members show the Speaker the material sought to be incorporated, prior to the request.
The right of Members to peruse and revise the Hansard proofs of their speeches is a well - established practice. Although Members today have the right to correct their remarks, corrections that alter the sense of words used in debate or introduce new matter are not admissible.
So that they may satisfy themselves that the report of their speech is accurate, each Member is supplied, within two hours, a typescript of all questions, personal explanations, matters of privilege and speeches made by the Member in the House. Because speeches in the Committee of the Whole House are usually of short duration, typescripts are not provided except on request. Attached to each typescript ("Hansard Green") is a green cover that shows in red the time by which any suggested alterations should be returned for incorporation in the Daily Hansard. Such alterations, however, must be confined to correction of obvious errors or clarification of statements that may otherwise be misinterpreted; they must not alter the sense. Unless the Speaker's approval is first obtained, it is not in order to add new matter or to delete any statement made.
The following day, usually no later than 8.30 am, each Member is supplied with a copy of Daily Hansard from the previous sitting day. Those Members who were unable to read their Hansard Greens the previous day still have the opportunity to suggest alterations to the Daily Hansard for incorporation in the Weekly Hansard. However, to avoid delay in the publication of Weekly Hansard, Members are requested to return their proofs to the Chief Reporter as soon as possible after receiving them, and certainly no later than 12 noon that day. It may not be possible for Hansard to accept corrections received after that time.
Last reviewed: 17 July, 2009
Last updated: 22 July, 2009
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