The collection of Australian Prime Ministerial transcripts dates from the early 1940's. They exist in scanned hard copy from the early 1940's through to the beginning of the John Howard government. The hard copy transcripts have been scanned and optical character recognised (OCR).

The collection exists in electronic format from around the inception of the original pm.gov.au website in late 1997 through to the current government. The collection is managed by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

Scanned Documents (pre 1997 Transcripts)

The original documents are black and white and mostly single page and A4 in size, although there are some double-sided documents and several multiple page staple-bound soft cover booklets among the earlier material. 

The scanned documents are presented in a plain text format with an associated PDF. Due to scanning limitations and the quality of the original documents some of the earlier transcripts contain inaccuracies in the full text copy of the content. The PDF is the ultimate authority as it is a scanned version (image) of the original.

Electronic Documents (post 1997 Transcripts)

The material from late 1997 through to the current government has been sourced from the pm.gov.au website, and is therefore presented only in HTML.

We encourage you to notify us if you know of any material missing from this collection.

If you have any questions about the material please contact us at  library@pmc.gov.au or call 02 6271 5365.

Searching the Collection

Due to the quality of the scanned data, plain text searching by content, especially with earlier transcripts, may not produce the results you require.

The simple search provides for the input of keywords and will search in the title and body of the transcript for all words you enter.

Under the advanced search link the collection can be searched by title, date and Prime Minister and within the content of the transcript.

A timeline of Prime Ministers can be found at the National Archives website.

Further Information

Further information on Australian Prime Ministers can be found at the National Archives website and the Australian Prime Ministers Centre at the Museum of Australian Democracy.

Original copies of Prime Ministerial websites (beginning with John Howard)  are archived at the National Library Web Archive.