Parliamentary Hansard reporting set for an AI shake-up

The future of Queensland parliament’s Hansard reporters is in doubt after more than 160 years, as artificial intelligence threatens the need for human-generated reports.

Senior hansard reporter Annie Taguada at parliament in Brisbane. Picture: Tertius Pickard

Every venomous attack, teary explanation and rigorous policy debate from the rabble of parliament is recorded by a small band of women high above.

Their fingers tap lightning fast, they’re custodians of the dying art of typing – Hansard.

For 251 years Hansard has documented the goings on of Westminster parliaments but now its future is under a cloud as artificial intelligence threatens the need for human-generated reports.

In Queensland a crack all-female team of 12 reporters is responsible for recording every word and critical vote spoken by a politician in the Legislative Assembly that will be printed and referred to until the end of time.

Clerk of the parliament Neil Laurie describes the unassuming team as “ferociously protective” of their quality of work and it’s why they very rarely make mistakes.

It takes just hours for the speeches, shouting and interjections of politicians in the chamber to be transformed into a comprehensible transcript.

Senior hansard reporter Annie Taguada says she feels the weight of scrutiny on her work.

Members of parliament are sent their excerpts for approval and any corrections, but the substance of a sentence can’t be changed – regardless of how “politically embarrassing to somebody” it is.

“Sometimes members come back with wild ideas about what they would like to put in that they forgot to say,” chief Hansard reporter Josephine Mathers says.

“But we won’t put anything in they didn’t say.

“We won’t take anything out that they did say.”

That rings true, even when politicians start making up words.

Former Member for Burleigh Michael Hart in one speech was unsure whether he should say hectares or acres, so said “hect-acre”.

A rival politician picked up on the mistake and started using it in jest against Hart so, 10 years later, Hansard is occasionally entering the made-up word.

In 1864 Queensland parliament became the world’s first to appoint a permanent team of reporters to document the words of state politicians.

For more than 160 years the state has fostered a crack team of stenographers that remain the envy of the nation.

Many were trained on shorthand machines at Kedron in the 1970s and ’80s before honing their skills in federal parliament and then returning to Queensland.

That Kedron typing course has been gone for some 35 years and now there’s nowhere in Australia to learn Hansard’s shorthand machine.

“We’re rare,” reporter Annie Taguada says.

She joined Hansard in 1998 and, despite being an old hand, still feels the weight of her work.

“There’s obviously a lot of scrutiny of whatever we produce … and so knowing that people can see it now but they can also go back and see it in 10 years’ time or 50 years’ time – it does put that lens over it,” she said.

The women are veterans and, with no ability to train new staff on the complicated shorthand machines, Laurie is considering the future of Hansard in Queensland.

“Our current crop of reporters, many of them may not be here in 10 years’ time so we’re now looking at using the automatic speech recognition technology,” he says.

In a world of constant change, Hansard has remained a comforting constant.

Resignations are rare, coming on average once every five years.

Clerk of the Parliament Neil Laurie at an estimates hearing. Picture: Steve Pohlner

Speaker Pat Weir on Friday revealed publishing and monitoring officer Tania Coluccio would go on pre-retirement leave after 20 years in Hansard and 30 with the parliament.

Before her, the last resignation from the reporting team was so long ago that, when asked, Laurie, Mathers and Taguada all struggled to recall it.

In the 17th century only the records of decisions made by the House of Commons – like bills passed – were noted. However, the clerk of the parliament was quietly recording excerpts of speeches and decisions of the Commons in a personal book – which was increasingly relied upon as a source of precedent.

One day, the clerk was summoned to the palace after King Charles I heard a speech critical of him. Infuriated, he tore the offending pages from the clerk’s book.

Commons members discovered the king had heard what they had said and passed a resolution banning any record of their speeches.

Elizabeth I famously had a network of spies across London learning about what was being said inside parliament – gossip she shared at dinner parties.

“When print journalism started and there were stories about what was said and done in parliament that were actually not correct … parliament eventually decided that they publish their records,” Laurie says.

Hundreds of years later, as the crop of social media-era politicians do verbal battle in Queensland, the work of Hansard remains strikingly similar to that of 18th-century London.