Michael Fullilove was speech-writer for Paul Keating and edited the collection of Australian political speeches in "Men and Women of Australia: Our Greatest Modern Speeches". So he knows a thing or two about speeches. Fullilove has an op-ed in the Sydney Morning Herald titled: Pointers on how to make the already dull duller .

The op-ed covers the recommendations in the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Procedure's Inquiry into encouraging an interactive chamber . There are three recommendations in the report:

• Second reading of a bill limited to 15 minutes with 5 minutes for questioning.
• MPs can opt out of answering questions from the second reading.
• Interventions should be brief and relevant to second bill reading.

Doesn't sound like much but Fullilove calls the report a wolf in sheep's clothing. I read through the Hansards as much as I can, and to be truthful I lose interest in the House Hansards. They are partisan, politics as sport and even the speeches that are outside of legislative debate or question time are pretty poor.

The Senate Hansards are much better, especially the adjournment speeches which are very high quality in the Senate. This is normally where Senators make a ten to twenty minute speech on a specific topic, not necessarily directly related to current legislation being proposed, and do so in a thoughtful, non-partisan and meaningful manner.

I have reproduced several of those speeches in full, and largely without personal comment - preferring that the speeches speak for themselves. For instance:

• Trood's Regionalism
• Senator Fifield's speech on Bruce Smith and Liberalism
• Independent Contractors Amendment (Andrew Murray and Eric Abetz) - rediscussed on troppo
• Andrew Bartlett and Representation
• Andrew Murray on a Judicial Committee
• A Queensland Senate Proposal (Ian McDonald)
• Defence Monopsony (Mark Bishop)
• Australian Political Parties For Democracy (John Faulkner)

I have also published speeches outside of the Hansard such as Barnaby Joyce and recently Petro Georgiou . Fullilove continues:

Furthermore, we the people should make it clear to our elected representatives that there is a constituency for speeches: that there is electoral advantage to be had from decent speeches, and a price to be paid for hopeless speeches. If the occasional mumbler has to make way at election time, well, the Hansard reporters will thank us for it.

I think there is an argument that South Sea Republic is in the market for re-publishing good and thoughtful speeches. If there is not many House speeches in that list it is because there are not many good House speeches in my opinion. The Senate has it all over them in that area.

The Hansards are published pretty quickly on the APH website after parliament sits. So there is no reason why blogs, mainstream-media and other forms of citizen media don't go picking through them immediately - even if it is only to say they are crap. Which is true in some cases, but the gems ... the gems glitter and give even the most cynical hope.

Even though the gems can be hard to find, there is no need to make as many speeches as possible lumps of coal. There is one submission in the inquiry that makes Fullilove (and me) recoil in horror - Ian Harris, the Clerk of the House, proposes that Powerpoint presentations be used in House debates. Any Powerpoint based speech will not be getting republished on South Sea Republic.

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More Reading on Michael fullilove

• Michael Fullilove
• House of Representatives Standing Committee on Procedure
• The Market For Parliamentary Speeches
• Enjoying a Speech for the Speech's Sake