5. HOUSE DOCUMENTS—AGENDA AND RECORD
Notice Paper
The Notice Paper is the Houses agenda paper, listing all business before the House (S.O. 100A). It is published before every sitting of the House apart from the first sitting of a session. 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. If business (which may include both committee and delegation reports and items of private Members business) has been accorded priority by the Selection Committee for the next sitting Monday, it is listed separately as Business accorded priority for . . ..
Items are listed as either Notices—signifying that a Member or Minister has given notice of his or her intention to introduce a matter for consideration, or as Orders of the day—signifying that the matter has already been introduced and that the House has ordered it to be considered, or further considered, on a later day.
Orders of the day on the Notice Paper are regarded as the property of the House and cannot be withdrawn or removed without the permission of the House (S.O. 162). A notice may be withdrawn before it is moved by the Member sponsoring it (S.O. 140).
Items listed under private Members business are removed from the Notice Paper automatically if they have not been considered within eight sitting Mondays (S.O. 104B). In the case of items of government business on which no further debate is desired, it is customary for the House periodically to agree 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.
Order of business on Notice Paper
The House is required to consider matters in the order they appear on the days Notice Paper (S.O. 155, 189).
As a general rule, notices are first entered on the Notice Paper in the order they are received by the Clerk, with the provisos that notices from one Member are not placed consecutively in priority of a notice received from another Member during the same sitting, and private Members notices given by government and non-government Members are placed alternately (S.O. 135).
However, Ministers (in practice, the Leader of the House) may change the order of government business before each issue of the Notice Paper goes to press (S.O. 105) and the Selection Committee similarly arranges the order of private Members business to be considered on Mondays (S.Os 104A, 331).
Notices given for a specified day take priority when that day is reached (S.O. 156). If, at the adjournment of the House, any notices have not been called on, they are placed on the Notice Paper for the next sitting after the notices of motion given for that day (S.O. 156).
Questions on notice section
Questions on notice are listed on the Notice Paper in the order in which they are received by the Clerk (S.O. 149) and remain there, unless withdrawn by the Member asking them, 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.
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
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
The Clerk is required to record all proceedings of the House in the Votes and Proceedings (S.O. 38). 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.
For each item of business the Votes and Proceedings records all action taken by the House, for example the motions and amendments moved 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 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 the fact 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 or committee membership; 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; a record of Members attendance; and the minutes of proceedings of the Main Committee (if it met that day).
Hansard
Hansard (official title Parliamentary Debates) contains the full report of the debates in the House and the Main Committee—that is, the transcript of Members speeches. Hansard is not the official record of the proceedings of the House; that is the purpose of the Votes and Proceedings.
Although Hansard is essentially a record of the spoken word, it contains other information relating to the proceedings, including the text of petitions presented and motions and amendments moved (even when not read out), the titles of papers tabled, and notices given by Members. It also contains answers to questions on notice.
Hansard is issued in two editions. There is a daily proof issue available the day after the proceedings to which it refers, and a weekly final issue from which the bound volumes are compiled. Since 1999 the daily proof Hansard has been combined with the proof issue of the Votes and Proceedings.
The production of Hansard is the responsibility of the Department of the Parliamentary Reporting Staff.
Incorporation of unspoken matter
By leave of the House and the approval of the Chair, material of various kinds may be incorporated into the text. The practice of the House restricts incorporation to documents that cannot easily be read into the record and which need to be seen in visual form for comprehension, such as maps and statistical tables or graphs. Members are not permitted to incorporate the text of speeches they have not delivered in the House.
A Member seeking leave to incorporate material is advised to first show the material to the Minister at the Table or to the Member leading for the Opposition, as the case may be, as leave may be refused if this courtesy is not observed. Even if the House authorises the incorporation of unread matter, the final decision rests with the Speaker.
Editing and corrections
While the Hansard text is edited to some extent—for example, to remove repetitions and to correct grammatical mistakes—the editing is not permitted to affect the meaning of what is said.
Before the edited transcript is printed, each Member is given an opportunity to read what he or she has said and, if necessary, to make minor corrections. Although Members have this right to make corrections to their remarks, changes which alter the sense of words used in debate or introduce new matter are not permitted. In some instances of error or inaccuracy in the Hansard reports, the position is better clarified by a personal explanation.
Access to House documents
The documents described in this chapter are all publicly available via the House of Representatives Internet site at http://www.aph.gov.au/house/.
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