The Second Reading speech is given by the Minister or Member who is introducing the bill. It outlines the purpose of the bill and is recorded in Hansard (Parliamentary debates). The Second Reading speech may be used in statutory interpretation (Acts Interpretation Act 1987 s 15AB).
Sources of Commonwealth Second Reading speeches
Note: if you are having trouble locating the Second Reading speech, double check the year and title of the bill.
e.g. if you are looking for the Second Reading speech for the bill which became the Evidence Act 1995, you need to look for the Evidence Bill 1993.
e.g. if you are looking for the Second Reading speech for the bill which became the Legislation Act 2003, you need to look for the Legislative Instruments Bill 2003. The name of the Act was changed by the Acts and Instruments (Framework Reform) Act 2015.
| Parlinfo – Bill home pages |
- Coverage: mid-1990s onwards
- A bill home page provides information about the bill (including details of its passage through Parliament), links to the Second Reading speeches and other resources such EMs, committee references and bills digests.
- Parlinfo allows you to do more precise searches than the general Parliament website search.
- Use the advanced search:
- Select ‘Bills and Legislation’ in the ‘Search Collections’ section.
- Enter the title of the bill in the first field in the ‘Search Fields’ section on the right hand side of the screen.
- Select ‘title’ in the drop down menu next to the field containing your search terms. The site defaults to ‘exact phrase’, but you can change this to ‘all the words’ if required.
- Click search, then choose the record for the bill labelled ‘bill homepage’ in the search results list.
- You can also browse Parlinfo:
- Click on the magnifying glass icon next to either ‘Bills of Previous Parliaments’ or ‘Bills of the Current Parliament’ (you may need to click on the + symbol to expand the categories for the current Parliament). This generates a list of all bill records for that category.
- Use the filters on the left hand side to refine the list. Select ‘Bills Homepage’ in the subcategory section, then refine by date until you get to the relevant year. The bills will then be listed alphabetically.
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| Parliament – Bill home pages |
- Coverage: mid-1990s onwards
- A bill home page provides information about the bill (including details of its passage through Parliament), links to the Second Reading speeches and other resources such EMs, committee references and bills digests.
- Search bills by title – note that the search defaults to ‘current bills’. If you need to research older bills, click on ‘more options’. Go to the ‘Period’ section and change ‘Parliament no’ to ‘all’, then go to the ‘Status’ section and select the relevant options under ‘Previous bills’.
- You can also browse all bills by title.
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| Parlinfo – Hansard |
- Coverage: 1901 onwards
- You can search the full text of Hansard to locate Second Reading speeches.
- Use the advanced search, as it allows you to limit your search to Hansard.
- Method 1 – using the bill title:
- Enter the title of the bill in quotation marks in the search box at the top of the page.
- Select ‘Hansard’ (both House of Representatives and Senate) in the ‘Search Collections’ section.
- Go to the ‘Results options’ section of the right hand side of the page and select ‘Date (Oldest First)’ in the ‘Order by’ field.
- Click search. The Second Reading speech will be fairly close to the top of the results list. Note that this method is also useful if you want to read all of the debates on the bill.
- Method 2 – using the procedural language of Parliament to isolate the Second Reading speech:
- Select ‘Hansard’ (both House of Representatives and Senate) in the ‘Search Collections’ section.
- Enter the title of the bill in the first field in the ‘Search Fields’ section on the right hand side of the screen, then select ‘title’ in the drop down menu next to the field containing your search terms.
- Enter the phrase ‘I move’ into the second field, then select ‘content’ in the drop down menu.
- Enter the phrase ‘read a second time’ into the third field, then select ‘content’ in the drop down menu.
- Use the date options if required. Note that bills did not always contain the year as part of the title (this practice started around the 1940s), so you may need to use this option when researching early bills or when you are not sure of the exact year of the bill.
- Click search. The results should be the Second Reading speech in each house. If the results are not as expected, you may need to tweak the search a little. There are also very occasional glitches with the digitisation process, which means that some letters have been rendered incorrectly and this can affect your search results.
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| Lawlex |
- Coverage: mid 1990s onwards (not comprehensive for earlier years)
- Each bill and Act on Lawlex has a ‘home page’ which usually includes a link to the Second Reading speech in the ‘Related links’ section. Note that if a bill is passed, the bill home page becomes the Act home page, so you will often need to search for the Act rather than the bill on Lawlex in order to find the Second Reading speech.
- Type in the name of the bill or Act in the ‘keywords’ field (but not the year or number). Set the jurisdiction to ‘CTH’ and click ‘Go’. Click on the relevant item in the results list to go to the home page for that item.
- Use the advanced search to conduct a more precise search. Using this option allows you to search a combination of jurisdictions, limit to particular document types (e.g. principal Act, amending Act, Bill), limit by year or year range and search full text.
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| Historic Hansard |
- Coverage: 1901-1980
- Search full text. You can limit by date, parliament, speaker etc. See search tips for details of the search syntax.
- Browse House of Representatives by bills A-Z, years, parliaments, or people.
- Browse Senate by bills A-Z, years, parliament, or people.
- Experimental data project by Tim Sherratt, Associate Professor of Digital Heritage at the University of Canberra.
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| GovPubs |
- Contains information about print holdings of Hansard in the National Library and State / Territory Libraries.
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Information about Commonwealth Hansard & Second Reading speeches
Historical note:
The name ‘Hansard’ comes from Thomas Hansard (1776–1833), who was the official printer of the British parliamentary debates from 1803.
| 1901-1953 |
Senate and House of Representatives Hansard published together in one series. |
| 1953-2013 |
Senate and House of Representatives Hansard published in separate series (red and green volumes) |
| 2013 onwards |
Hansard published online only |
Last updated: 27 April 2019
