Parliament of Australia: House of Representatives: Infosheet No. 12: Publications

Publications

House of Representatives Infosheet No. 12

Revised September 1999

This Infosheet describes documents which are produced by the House of Representatives or which are related to its work. Most of the publicly available documents mentioned in this Infosheet are available from Government Info Shops and are held by major libraries.

House documents are also available online from the House of Representatives internet site .

The House internet site also contains a range of other information about the House of Representatives and links to related areas.

Notice Paper (whats on the agenda?)

A Notice Paper is published for each day of sitting, apart from the first sitting day of a session of Parliament. The Notice Paper contains the following information:

Business section

The business section lists all items of business that are currently under consideration by the House. Items of business are grouped under the headings Government Business, Main Committee, Committee and Delegation Reports, Private Members Business, or (rarely, when the Speaker has sponsored an item of business) under the heading Business of the House.

Items are listed as either Noticessignifying that a Member or Minister has given notice of his or her intention to introduce a matter for consideration, or as Orders of the daysignifying that the matter has already been introduced and that the House has ordered it to be considered, or further considered, on a later day. Notices and orders of the day normally remain on the Notice Paper until the House has dealt with them fully. Notices not fully dealt with on the day of their introduction become orders of the day for a later sitting.

A notice may be withdrawn before it is moved by the Member sponsoring it. However, orders of the day on the Notice Paper are regarded as the property of the House and cannot be withdrawn or removed without the permission of the House.

Items listed under Private Members Business are removed from the Notice Paper automatically if they have not been considered within eight sitting Mondays. In the case of items of government business on which no further debate is desired, it is now customary for the House to agree periodically to a motion to discharge these from the Notice Paper.

At the end of a session all business on the Notice Paper lapses and the next session starts with a clean sheet.

The House is required by its standing orders to consider matters in the order they appear on the days Notice Paper. However, before each issue of the Notice Paper goes to press Ministers may change the order of government business and the Selection Committee similarly arranges the order of private Members business to be considered on Mondays. In addition, during a sitting there are procedures that can be used to postpone items of business or permit them to be taken out of turn.

Questions on notice

Questions on notice are listed on the Notice Paper and remain there until written replies are received by the Clerk. The first Notice Paper to be published for each sitting week includes all unanswered questions, while Notice Papers for subsequent sittings in a week only include questions which have appeared for the first time that week.

Questions may be withdrawn by the Member asking them. Answers to questions are sent to the Member concerned and published in Hansard. Copies are also sent to the Press Gallery.

Information section

The final section of the Notice Paper contains general information. It lists members of the Speakers panel (i.e. Members who can assist the Speaker and his or her deputies in the Chair); House and joint committees, their membership and inquiries being undertaken; and the appointment of Members to statutory bodies by the House.

Daily Program (whats on today?)

The Daily Program, or the Blue Program or Blue as it is also called after the colour of the paper it is printed on, provides a guide to each days expected proceedings. Unlike the Notice Paper, the Daily Program is not a formal document and does not fix the order of business or limit its scope. If circumstances require it a supplementary program may be published.

Some matters appear on the Daily Program which do not appear on the days Notice Paper, for example: prayers; the listing of a ministerial statement; the subject of a matter of public importance; the presentation of a major government paper or a committee report; and business which may be introduced without notice, such as taxation measures.

Votes and Proceedings (what did the House do?)

The Votes and Proceedings is the official record of the proceedings of the House of Representatives, in effect the minutes of its meetings. An issue of the Votes and Proceedings is published for each sitting.

The Votes and Proceedings records what is done (or deemed to be done) by the House as a collective body, and not the words of individual Members.

A typical days Votes and Proceedings records:

that the House met at a certain time and the Speaker took the Chair and read prayers;

that questions without notice were asked;

the papers presented;

motions moved in connection with any of the papers presented;

any matter of public importance proposed for discussion and that discussion took place;

each motion and bill considered by the House;

announcements of various kinds that have been made relating to the operation of the House, for example, details of ministerial arrangements;

messages received from the Senate or the Governor-General;

the question for the adjournment of the House, the fact that debate took place (the adjournment debate), the time the House adjourned and the date and time of its next meeting;

a list of papers deemed to have been presented (see page 6);

a record of Members attendance; and

the minutes of proceedings of the Main Committee (if it met that day).

For each item of business the Votes and Proceedings records all action taken by the Housefor example the moving of motions and amendments and the name of the Member who moved them; whether debate occurred (or was adjourned to a future day or resumed from an earlier occasion); the questions put from the Chair and the decision taken by the House on each question. If a formal vote (division) takes place the record lists the Members voting for and against the question.

A proof Votes and Proceedings for each sitting is published with the proof daily Hansard. Bound volumes are produced for each session and these include an index to the Votes and Proceedings as well as a separate index to the titles of the papers presented.

Hansard (what did Members say?)

Hansard is the best known parliamentary publication. Its official title is Parliamentary Debatesthe term Hansard, used in Australia and elsewhere, comes from the name of the 19th century publishers of the record of the House of Commons debates in the United Kingdom.

The House of Representatives Hansard contains the transcript of the debates in the House and the Main Committee, that is, the words of Members speeches. The text is edited to some extent, for example, to remove repetitions and to correct grammatical mistakes, however the editing is not permitted to affect the meaning of what is said.

Although Hansard is essentially a record of the spoken word, it contains other information relating to the proceedings, including the results of divisions, the text of amendments moved to motions and bills, the text of petitions presented and the titles of papers tabled.

In addition, with the permission of the House and the approval of the Chair, material of various kinds may be incorporated into the text. The rules restrict incorporation to documents, such as maps and statistical tables or graphs, which need to be seen in visual form for comprehension and cannot easily be read into the record. Members are not permitted to incorporate the text of speeches they have not delivered in the House.

At the end of each issue are details of notices given and answers to questions on notice which have been received and circulated that day. The full text of both question and answer are published. Occasionally, when many answers are received on the same day, it is necessary to hold over the publication of some to a later issue.

The House of Representatives Hansard is published in two editionsa daily proof issue (combined with the proof Votes and Proceedings) and a final weekly issue from which bound volumes are later prepared.

At the front of weekly issues and bound volumes are lists of names of people involved in the parliamentary processthe Governor-General; House office holders; party leaders; Members of the House, Ministers and shadow ministers. The bound volumes contain comprehensive indexes to the debates.

Hansard is produced by the Department of the Parliamentary Reporting Staff. The Hansard internet site gives online access to the Hansard of both Houses.

Legislation

Bills

A bill is a proposal for a law or a change to the lawa formal document prepared in the form of a draft Act of Parliament. Infosheet No. 7 Making Laws describes the processes involved in the passage of bills through the House.

Accompanying each government bill is an explanatory memorandum. This is a separate document explaining the reasons for the bill, and giving a general outline of its contents and notes explaining the intention of each clause.

The first publicly circulated copy of a bill is its first reading print, available immediately after introduction. Copies of each bill are available to Members with the explanatory memorandum as soon as the bill is introduced.

If a bill is amended by the House in which it has been initiated it is reprinted, with the amendments incorporated, before its passage to the other House (a third reading print). If it is amended again by the second House a schedule setting out those amendments is published.

The Daily Bills List shows bills currently before the Parliament and the stage reached by each bill. The Daily Bills List and the full text of bills, amendments and explanatory memorandums are accessible on the internet.

Form of a bill

The parts of a bill appear in the following sequence. Not all parts are present in every bill.

Cover pagesets out the short and long titles of the bill.

Contentsnot formally part of the bill.

Long titlesets out briefly the purposes of the bill, starting A bill for an Act to . . ..

Preamble (rare).

Enacting formulaThe Parliament of Australia enacts: .

Clausesthe substantive provisions of the bill. Clauses may be subdivided into subclauses, paragraphs and subparagraphs. Large bills are divided into Parts, which may be further divided into Divisions and Subdivisions. Clause 1 always states the name by which the Act is to be citedthe short title. When a bill has a commencement provision, stating the date on which the Act is to come into operation, this is usually contained in clause 2. Clause 3 often contains definitions, setting out the meanings of words used, but these may also appear elsewhere in the bill.

Schedulesmaterial referred to and given legislative effect by preceding clauses. Schedules are used to avoid cluttering the main text of the bill with detail. For bills which amend existing legislation, the amendments are set out in schedules to the bill.

Acts

A bill becomes an Act when it has been passed in identical form by the House of Representatives and the Senate, and been assented to by the Governor-General. What were the clauses of the bill are then known as sections of the Act. Acts are numbered on a calendar year basis in the order of receiving assent.

Acts are published individually (pamphlet copies) as soon as possible after they are passed, and are later republished in bound volumes for each year. Acts which have been amended by subsequent legislation are periodically reprinted, consolidating amendments. A set containing all Acts reprinted in consolidated form is produced in a series of binders which can be updated as Acts are reprinted. A cumulative index of Acts is published periodically and there is also a monthly index listing Acts published or reprinted during the current year. Reprinting and binding of Acts is the responsibility of the Attorney-Generals Department.

Notifications of Acts assented to are reported to the House and recorded in the Votes and Proceedings and in Hansard. This information can also be found in the Government Notices issue of the Commonwealth of Australia Gazette.

The text of all current Acts as well as related legislative material can be found on the SCALEplus database run by the Attorney-Generals Department. Internet access is at http://scaleplus.law.gov.au.

Parliamentary Papers

Many documents are presented to the House or Senate, that is, tabled, for the information of Members of Parliament and the public. These documents include reports, returns and statements of all kinds from government departments and authorities, parliamentary committee reports, reports of royal commissions and other government inquiries and a wide variety of other papers. The contents of such documents become public by being tabled in the House.

The Parliamentary Papers Series

The Parliamentary Papers Series contains all documents presented to the House or the Senate which have been ordered to be printed. As most papers of a substantial nature are ordered to be printed the series is a major reference source for information on the role and activities of the Parliament and Government.

Papers made part of the Parliamentary Papers Series are so labelled and numbered in annual order.

Papers not printed

Although not distributed as part of the Parliamentary Papers Series, papers not ordered to be printed are also public documents. If no copies are available arrangements can be made to inspect the originals.

Deemed papers

Some papers are not physically tabled in the House but are deemed to be presented if they have been delivered to the Clerk and recorded in the Votes and Proceedings. This method of presentation is only intended to save the time of the House and deemed papers have the same status as papers tabled in the House.

The majority of deemed papers are documents required by law to be presented to the House, including items of delegated legislation such as regulations, by-laws, rules, determinations etc. The Disallowable Instruments List (publicly available on the House internet site) lists regulations etc which have been tabled and which remain subject to possible disallowance by the House or the Senate.

Committee reports

The purpose of all committee inquiries is to report to the House (or to both Houses in the case of joint committees). The processes involved in committee inquiries are discussed in Infosheet No. 4 Committees. Committee reports are tabled in the House and ordered to be printed, thus becoming part of the Parliamentary Papers Series. Minutes of meetings and transcripts of published evidence are tabled at the same time as the report to which they relate but are usually not ordered to be printed.

Committee reports and transcripts are available online from the House of Representatives internet site.

The rules and practice of the House

The formal rules governing the proceedings of the House are known as the standing orders. Rules in force only for a specified period of time or for the current session of Parliament are called sessional orders. These rules are amended from time to time by the House and the booklet Standing and Sessional Orders as at . . . is reprinted periodically.

The Guide to Procedures, a companion volume to the Standing Orders, is a concise introduction to the procedures of the House of Representatives.

House of Representatives Practice is a comprehensive, detailed text on the law and practice of the House of Representatives. This work presents a degree of historical perspective and includes appendices containing extensive statistical information about the proceedings of the House. The current (3rd) edition was published in 1997. House of Representatives Practice also contains the text of the Constitution, the standing and sessional orders, the Parliamentary Privileges Act and the Parliamentary Precincts Act.

Other House publications

The Department of the House of Representatives Annual Report, tabled in September or October each year, provides information about the operation of the department for the previous financial year. The Work of the Session, published at the end of each major sitting period, contains detail on the work of the House and its committees for the period.

The List of Members, giving Members addresses and phone and facsimile numbers, and the Seating plan of the House of Representatives Chamber are updated and published regularly. The Department also publishes a pamphlet on the House, in a number of languages and a large print edition, which is available to visitors.

From time to time a committee may issue a discussion paper on a topic relating to an inquiry and some committees issue newsletters giving information on their current activities. These are available direct from the committee secretariat, or online from the committee area of the House internet site.

Privilege

Documents ordered to be printed (that is, Parliamentary Papers) or authorised to be published by a House of the Parliament or a parliamentary committee are covered by parliamentary privilege. This means that no legal action (e.g. for defamation) can be taken against those who publish them. The Hansard record of the debates is also protected by privilege. For a more detailed discussion of this subject see Infosheet No. 5 Parliamentary Privilege.

Suggestions for further reading

House of Representatives Practice, 3rd edn. A.G.P.S., Canberra, 1997. pp 555–582.

Last updated: September 1999