ADDRESS TO LAUNCH THE TASMANIAN PARLIAMENT HANSARD DIGITISATION PROJECT BY HER EXCELLENCY PROFESSOR THE HONOURABLE KATE WARNER AM GOVERNOR OF , FRIDAY 19 JUNE 2015

Good afternoon all. May I begin by thanking Juliet Webster, Parliamentary Librarian, and her colleagues for inviting me here today to launch this important project, the digitisation of the Tasmanian Parliament Hansard from 1979 to 1991 to ensure that the entire record is available online.

The official record of Parliamentary debates is an important element of our system of government. So it is not out of order that the Governor, as Head of State is asked to officiate, as I have been. But I must advise you that, although I was driven from Government House in the Vice-Regal Mercedes, I nearly required a magic carpet to actually get in here! This is because the apolitical Head of State is not permitted on the green carpet of the House of Assembly. And as strange a custom as that may seem to be of our political system, it’s a convention that has had its rightful place in parliamentary democracies for a very long time, symbolising the independence of the elected House from the Sovereign. It seems the last time a king or queen entered the House of Commons was when in 1642 Charles 1 stormed in and tried to arrest some members of parliament.

But here I am and delighted to be launching the project. And I may add that as a legal academic I know all too well the importance of the accessibility of Parliamentary records.

It’s worth noting in relation to Hansard, that unlike other Australian colonies, Tasmania was slow to adopt it. The reason given was often to do with money. One of the earliest votes in the new Tasmanian Parliament, in February 1858 in the Legislative Council, to establish a reporting system for the debates of Parliament, was defeated 7:5.

Then in 1907 (and I freely admit I am quoting the Tasmanian Parliamentary Library website) a government cost assessment found that a Hansard service was not justifiable and Premier John Evans said that a Hansard would only be a “luxury” and would simply amount to “entombing” what Members said. That vote was lost 14:13.

In 1937 Premier Robert Cosgrove said that the cost of setting up a Hansard system would be “prohibitive”. And so reliance continued on the Mercury Reprints and a 1960 motion to introduce a Hansard service was also narrowly defeated. Finally in 1977 the Government of Premier Doug Lowe generated sufficient momentum to have the Tasmanian Hansard commence in 1979. HANSARD Which brings us to today. This project being launched is not without precedent, Law Libraries Tasmania having worked with AustLII on the digitisation of the Tasmanian Law Reports (1896-1991) and Tasmanian legislation (1826-1995). So there was good scope to turn to Hansard and it came about in the following way.

Law Libraries Tasmania applied in 2014 for a grant from the Law Foundation to cover the costs associated with scanning copies of the Tasmanian Parliament Hansard from its year of commencement in 1979 through to 1991; the years prior to 1992 being available in paper copy only.

Funding thus secured, the digitised Archive was generated by the scanning and optical character recognition processing of paper copy of the original Hansard for the House of Assembly and the Legislative Council.

Acrodata, the Tasmanian owned and operated company, scanned the documents. There were over 300 volumes scanned, with each volume containing approximately 270 images. So that’s eighty thousand-plus images.

The provided the original documents and administrative support for the project in uploading the files to their website, while Law Libraries Tasmania managed the project.

Juliet Webster is quite right in stating that: “It is a major achievement that the project has been completed and access to the Parliamentary record online is now available to benefit anyone wanting access to debates, and especially 2R speeches for legislation over those years.”1 I can well appreciate how useful this will be. I often have needed to search Hansard to uncover reasons for particular changes in the law or the thinking behind opposition and support for particular changes. And of course an electronic version of the debates makes such searches so much more efficient and can save countless hours. This morning I was able to discover that the first use of the phrase domestic violence in Parliament could well have been on 28th March 1984 – and of “child pornography”, 21st October 1980.

I congratulate Juliet and her Parliamentary team; likewise Law Libraries Tasmania, the Law Foundation, and Acrodata.

1 Email dated 14 April 2015 from Juliet Webster, Parliamentary Librarian, to David Owen.