Across Time and Jurisdictions: AustLII's Australian Royal Commissions Library

Abstract

Among the most important public documents in Australia, since the nineteenth century formation of the Australasian colonies, are the reports of royal commissions and other executive or legislatively mandated public inquiries, select committees of parliament, and other quasi-legislative or judicial inquisitorial bodies.

These reports have not been able to be comprehensively searched. Until the late twentieth century they were only made available as selectively issued paper reports included in tabled parliamentary papers. More recently commissions have established their own websites, but once the commission has reported, the ongoing maintenance of the website is at risk of disappearing. There are no consolidated and searchable collections of royal commission reports even for a single Australian jurisdiction, let alone Australia-wide.

In 2021 AustLII (Australasian Legal Information Institute0 and twelve partner universities obtained funding to address these problems, utilising AustLII’s substantial digitisation infrastructure and staff with expertise in all forms of document digitisation. Libraries assisted in identifying reports to be digitised.

The Australian Royal Commissions and Public Inquiries Library adds to AustLII 40 new databases containing the reports of 3,968 Royal Commissions and Public Inquiries from the Commonwealth and all states and territories, from the mid-nineteenth century, totalling 5,568 documents and over 527,000 new pages. These reports are thoroughly integrated with all other resources on AustLII through mean of a ‘dynamic virtual library’. AustLII managed to locate 94% of all identified ‘public inquiry’ Reports, and all of those were then digitised.

This paper documents the number of Royal Commissions in each Australian jurisdiction since the 1850s, gives examples of the types of searches that can be conducted over the Library, and explains its future maintenance.

We conclude that the online resources developed by this project, integrated with the wealth of other legal resources available on AustLII, creates the most comprehensive research facility on Royal Commissions and public enquiries for researchers and policy analysts, and will enrich contemporary and historical research for all those seeking to better understand developments in Australian law, history, politics and public policy. These resources represent a significant and successful investment in the rule of law in Australia.

Keywords: Royal Commissions, Public Inquiries, AustLII