What are Parliamentary Debates (Hansard)?

Parliamentary debates contain the following:

• a full report of speeches and statements made in both houses of Parliament, substantially verbatim, but with repetitions and redundancies omitted and obvious mistakes corrected;
• the text or summary of petitions presented to Parliament;
• answers to Questions on Notice and Questions without Notice (N.B. The NSW Legislative Assembly publishes a separate Questions & Answers.)

The debates are not the official record of business. This is contained in the Journals (Upper House) and the Votes and proceedings (Lower House).

Parliamentary debates are also known as Hansard or Hansards, after Thomas Hansard (1776–1833), official printer of the British parliamentary debates from 1803. Hansards are published by the Commonwealth Government and by each State and Territory.

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