Not Word-Perfect

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 756, 31 August 1929, Page 10

Not Word-Perfect

Parliamentary Speech Records

HANSARD, the official record of Parliamentary debates, is not in every sense a word-perfect index to everything that is transacted in the House of Representativ es. On the contrary, members’ speeches, which cost the country about 556,400 annually to print, are subject to revision—sometimes drastic revision—before they are final > allowed to circulate.

11l these enlightened days ot political candour, few members of Parliament attempt to disguise the fact that they focus a careful eye upon the proofs of their speeches before sending them forward to the Government printer. Only a year or two ago an Auckland member chided an opponent on the floor of the House, for altering the Hansard proof of his speech, and, when rebuked for this unworthy suggestion, replied cheerily:—“Well, if you do not, you are the only man in this House that does not.” Lest that anecdote should create a false impression, it should be explained that members are allowed the privilege of making corrections in the proofs merely to ensure that no glaring mistakes reach the records, and there is no reason to suspect that deliberate deception is practised for the purpose of deceiving trusting constituents. But after the proof of a speech has passed through the hands of its creator, and has survived the elaborate dressing-up which is often found to be desirable, it probably reads far more pleasantly, and perhaps conveys more, than when it was originally delivered. Many students of politics cannot altogether comprehend why, seeing that Hansard is ostensibly an official record of the proceedings of the House, members are allowed to alter their speeches after they are delivered. As an instrument of political warfare, an old Hansard proof may become very dangerous; at other times it might be used as a convenient reminder of consistency. Always, however, it is a useful section in the country’s Parliamentary history. Hansard last year cost £6,369 9s to print, including the cost of the paper used in the process, and although 6,900 copies of every issue were turned out, the subscribers’ list numbered only 138, and the return for this seemingly huge outlay reached the modest figure of £199. In the early days of Parliament, the fight for freedom in reporting the proceedings of the Legislature was fought as bitterly as any other controversy in history. Parliaments of the seventeenth century claimed the

right of private deliberation, and the weapon of privilege was used to maintain the tradition of privacy long after the reason for secrecy had disappeared. Clever newspaper editors dressed up reports of speeches and published them, and later, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the printing of the records in the British Parliament was taken over purely as a private venture, and in ISOS they fell into the hands of T. C. Hansard, a Parliamentary printer. It was not until 1909 that the British House of Commons assumed full control of the records of Parliamentary debates. Since that time, the reports have been known simply as Hansard. If the House be dull, and the galleries sparsely inhabited, Hansard listens to everything that is said, and fast shorthand writers record it. In this way Hansard possesses a definite and a specific use, in that it enables the people to study completely the attitude of their members upon all questions of importance. It sometimes happens that members are heard speaking almost to an empty House. Nobody within the chamber is interested in their local affairs. But Hansard is listening, and at the end of the month the wise member will see that all his interested constituents are advised of the attitude he adopted in Parliament in advocacy of their needs. If a speech does not read connectedly in the first place, the Hansard reporter deals with that. He is not a machine. His first mission is to take notes, and secondly to protect uncertain orators from themselves. For example, the speech of a member who recently created a mild sensation by the risque nature of his language, reached the published edition of Hansard with the questionable remarks excised. At other times the sight of an unaltered Hansard proof is an education in distorted typography. The official record, Hansard, then, can hardly be termed a perfect interpretation of what is said in the House. Rather does it represent, not what a member says, nor even what he intended to say, but what he later discovers he should have said.

L.J.C