VPRS 9536 Transcripts of Council Debates

This series comprises files containing transcripts of debates which took place in the course of Council meetings. Full transcripts were made of two meetings in 1956. The remainder of the series consists of transcripts of speeches made in the course of debates by councillors under particular Orders of the Day, and speeches made at Council meetings by visiting dignitaries.The criteria for making a transcript of one debate and not another is not known. According to Council staff, the practice of recording the proceedings of Council meetings on an audio tape-recorder was continued through the nineteen-eighties into the early nineteen-nineties. The tapes were not transcribed after February 1981.The audio tapes from which the transcripts were made have not been retained by the Council. (Instructions for destruction of tapes may be found in VPRS 3183 Town Clerks Correspondence Files Series II, file 77/1081/18.)Orders of the Day are summarised in VPRS 8910Minute Books of Council Meetings, and VPRS 8911 Proceedings of Council Meetings. The transcripts constitute a much fuller version of speeches made by councillors in debates than either of the aforementioned series.