Of course as soon as I posted about how to find Federal Hansard Debates, we discover another source that perhaps surpasses all the ones I listed previously!

I tweeted very excitedly (and not ironically!) last week when Jen casually linked me to LiPad – The Linked Parliamentary Data Project:

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LiPad allows users to search through the Hansard debates with a Google-like search bar, while linking the debates with information about the parliamentarians. Though I have not used it much thus far, after a couple test searches from what I can tell it is easier to search than the other services I have used thus far.

The advanced search screen allows you to search by keyword, politician, party or date:

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The results page from any search gives you a summary of where your terms can be found, and you can click through to the full Hansard entry from that day to get the contextual discussion. You can also view individual parliamentarians’ history or be linked through to their profile on PARLINFO.

As an added bonus, you can also find some pretty rad pictures of the old MPs, such as the one below; this mo/beard is one for the ages!

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