The Minister (or Member) introducing the bill gives a speech which outlines the purpose of the bill. The Minister’s speech is recorded in Hansard and may be used for statutory interpretation, see the Acts Interpretation Act 1954 (Qld) ss 14B and 53
Prior to August 2011, this speech was given at the start of the Second Reading stage and was known as the ‘Second Reading speech’. Since August 2011, the speech is given when the bill is introduced and is known as the ‘Explanatory Speech’. The Minister may make an additional speech at the beginning of the Second Reading stage (e.g. to respond to the committee report). See Fact Sheet 3.22: Overview of the Parliamentary Reform and Modernisation Initiatives.
Sources of Queensland Second Reading / Explanatory Speeches
| Parliament |
- Coverage: 1860- (Hansard); 2007- (Bills Register)
- From 2007 onwards, there is a link to the Second Reading / Explanatory Speech from each bill on the Bills Register: current session or previous sessions.
- The advanced search allows you to search the full text of Hansard. Select ‘Hansard’ from the ‘what would you like to search’ menu, then select the relevant year or years. Pre-1990 documents are being added progressively. Hansard is currently searchable back to the 1950s, plus 1860-1863, though additional years are available for browsing.
- If you know the date of the speech, you can use the ‘browse by date’ function: select the relevant year from the drop down menu, then click on the relevant date. Note that some years have not been digitised yet, so there are gaps at various points.
- Hansard indexes are available from 1990 onwards. Entries for bills give page numbers – use the table on the first page of the index to convert these to dates so that you can use the ‘browse by date’ feature described above.
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| Lawlex |
- Coverage: 1990-
- Speeches are linked to the record for both the Act and the bill. Note that the free version of Lawlex only provides access to current bills (a deeper archive is available to subscribers).
- Type in the name of the Act or bill in the ‘keywords’ field and the year in the ‘year from’ field. Set the jurisdiction to ‘QLD’, then click search.
- On the home page for the Act or bill, click on ‘Hansard – 2nd Reading Speech’ in the ‘related links’ section if available.
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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 Queensland Hansard & Second Reading / Explanatory speeches
Hansard is traditionally a substantially verbatim record of the debates in Parliament. Since 12 February 2008, the Queensland Parliament has combined the Parliamentary Debates and the Votes & Proceedings (minutes) into one publication called the ‘Record of Proceedings’. It is still commonly called Hansard (source: Queensland Parliament FAQ)
Last updated: 20 April 2014
