State Hansard AI mentions
How often the state and territory parliaments talk about AI, by month, from their own Hansard.
In August 2026 the 4 state and territory parliaments that sat and that we can read (New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania, Northern Territory) mentioned AI in 82 of 4217 speeches, 1.9%, over 15 sitting days. The share peaked at 2.5% in February 2026.
The series since 2025
The last thirteen months
| Month | Count | Of | Share | Index |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 2026 | 82 | 4,217 | 1.9% | — |
| July 2026 | 0 | 44 | 0.0% | — |
| June 2026 | 80 | 3,945 | 2.0% | — |
| May 2026 | 60 | 5,475 | 1.1% | — |
| April 2026 | 6 | 1,209 | 0.5% | — |
| March 2026 | 90 | 6,022 | 1.5% | — |
| February 2026 | 92 | 3,605 | 2.5% | — |
| December 2025 | 23 | 2,984 | 0.8% | — |
| November 2025 | 36 | 5,890 | 0.6% | — |
| October 2025 | 42 | 4,126 | 1.0% | — |
| September 2025 | 57 | 5,343 | 1.1% | — |
How we make it
Each month we take every sitting day's transcript from each parliament's own machine route, never through a browser, and split it into speeches the way the transcript marks a member taking the floor. A speech counts once if any AI term appears in it. We publish the count and the share of all speeches, per parliament and combined, because the parliaments differ in size and sitting pattern. Before every pull the job checks a known transcript from each parliament still downloads and still reads the same way; a parliament whose route has moved is reported as not read that month, never as zero. Read: New South Wales, Queensland, Australian Capital Territory, Tasmania, Northern Territory. Not yet read: Victoria (Parliament of Victoria copyright: personal, research or orga…); South Australia (hansardsearch.parliament.sa.gov.au answers 403 to every non-…); Western Australia (parliament.wa.gov.au answers 403 to every non-browser reques…).
| Code | What we count | Why it is in |
|---|---|---|
| nsw | New South Wales | GET api.parliament.nsw.gov.au/api/hansard/search/year/{year} → daily PDF by document id |
| qld | Queensland | HEAD documents.parliament.qld.gov.au/events/han/{year}/{Y_M_D}_WEEKLY.pdf for every weekday; 200 is a sitting day |
| act | Australian Capital Territory | GET www.hansard.act.gov.au/hansard/{assembly}/{year}/debates(PDF).htm → PDF/tP<yymmdd>.pdf (proof) or P<yymmdd>.pdf (final) |
| tas | Tasmania | GET www.parliament.tas.gov.au/_designs/data-feed/house-of-assembly-calendar-{year} (and the Council's feed) → day page → HA-/LC- PDF |
| nt | Northern Territory | POST territorystories.nt.gov.au/api/search once → full_record → whole-day PDF on S3 |
Method version 0.2. When the terms or the basket change, the version changes and we re-run the whole history.
Source and licence
The Hansard of each state and territory parliament. Reference month August 2026, read on 10 September 2026. Licence Varies by parliament; derived counts only. Hansard © the respective Parliament. NSW via the Parliament's Hansard API (CC BY); NT via Territory Stories, Library & Archives NT (CC BY 4.0); ACT © ACT Legislative Assembly (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).
Read it with care
- South Australia and Western Australia refuse non-browser requests and publish no open-data route, so they are not read; the combined figure is the parliaments we can read.
- Victoria's site asks bots to stay out and limits reuse to personal, research and organisational use; it is wired but not pulled until that question is settled.
- The unit is a speech as the transcript marks it. Parliaments differ in how they mark interjections and continuations, so compare each parliament with itself across time before comparing parliaments with each other.
- Proof transcripts are replaced by corrected ones weeks later; the previous month is re-read on every run.
- A mention is a mention. This series measures attention, not tone.