Parliamentary Speech and Careers in Australia

Debate in parliament is a cornerstone of democracy, where policy is debated, government announcements made, and government is questioned by the opposition. Yet it is relatively understudied in political science. That is now changing as computing power and techniques for analysing large sources of data have become available. Using the complete set of Hansard for Australia from 1901 to 2016 and separately compiled data on the characteristics of all parliamentarians we will be examining two questions. The first is concerned with career progression. Are speeches correlated with becoming ministers? Does speaking more enhance career prospects; does topic matter; does nature of speech matter. What are the effects of speech on committee service and, in turn, how does committee service affect career progression? The second concerns gender issues. It has been found with regard to committee work and for ministerial positions, that there is gender bias with regard to the prestige of the portfolio and femininity of the portfolio. We will examine this with regard to speech. Do women tend to choose to speak on topics that are different to those men talk on? Do women talk more or less often in the chamber than do men? Further, are there gender differences in the types of debates in which women participate – for example in question time, adjournment debates, matters of public interest? Linking gender differences in debate with political careers, there is currently debate on how far women are moved into feminine portfolios through their own choice or bias in the principals who appoint them. Examination of gender differences in patterns of parliamentary debate will help us to answer whether (and to what extent) gender differences in political career outcomes are the result of structural biases in the expectations set for female legislators. We will, in addition, through an examination of qualitative evidence we try to determine how much discretion parliamentarians have with regard to what they speak on.