Search Help

Quick Search

Quick search is a basic search that examines the Hansard debate text for the keywords you type into the search box.

By default, this searches only the current and previous parliaments, and both the Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council, with results sorted by most recent at the top.

Advanced Search

Advanced Search gives you more powerful keyword search features, such as finding exact phrases and excluding specific words.

You can also restrict your search by querying against several metadata fields attached to Hansard:

Title or subject of the speech (e.g. "Melbourne Cup")
Member party (only for 58^th Parliament onwards)
Name of the member who gave the speech (also the presiding officers, [Speaker] and [President])
House (Legislative Assembly or Legislative Council)
Speech activity type (see Activities Help for more information)
Date the speech was made (by parliament or year/month/day)

For the member, parliament and date fields on the Advanced Search screen, you can select multiple values in a list by holding down the Control key and clicking each item.

Search Tips

To find a specific phrase in Hansard, use the Advanced Search feature.
The search engine automatically looks for plurals and morphological variations on the keywords you enter. For example, searching on "consult" will find consult, consults, consulting, consultant, consultants et cetera.
Use a comma when searching for specific large numbers (e.g. 35,000). This is important when searching for Questions on Notice that exceed 9999.
Upper or lower case doesn't matter, e.g. "Premier" will give the same results as "premier".

Visit the Frequently Asked Questions for more tips and information on searching Hansard.

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Last Updated: Tuesday, 20 January 2015 09:53