The Parliament website contains a substantial library of parliamentary business documents that can be found via the various search functions on this website. Because of the volume of information available, using "advanced" search queries may assist in finding relative search results quickly.
Supported search functionality on this website is detailed below.
Boolean Search
Boolean search is a powerful technique for refining searches using logic-based operators like AND, OR, and NOT to narrow, broaden, or exclude keywords.
A description of how these operators work and example usage helps to clarify how they refine a search query:
AND Use AND between connected keywords to require that both of the connected words are present in the results.
Example:
- budget AND annual will only find results that contain both "budget" and "annual"
OR Use OR between connected keywords to require that search finds results containing any of the connected keywords (or all of them.)
Example:
- house OR apartment will find results that contain either "house" or "apartment" or both
NOT Use OR between connected keywords to exclude results containing a specific keyword.
Example:
- election NOT committee will find results that contain "election" but not when "committee" is present.
Note that more than one boolean term may be combined within a single search query. For example, property AND tax NOT TRP will find results that must contain both the words "property" and "tax" but only if they do not contain the phrase "TRP".
Exact Phrase
To find results that contain an exact phrase, place quotation marks " " around the words being searched. This instructs search to only show pages that include the words in that exact order.
Example:
- "code of conduct" finds results that include all three words together, not separately.
Tip: Use exact phrases when searching for document titles, specific names, or quoted text.
Wildcard Search
A wildcard symbol (*) will be substituted for unknown letters or words. It is useful when searching for variations of a word or phrase.
Example:
- educat* finds educate, education, educational, etc.
Tip: Avoid overusing wildcards; they increase the scope of search and can lead to too many unrelated results.
Search Filters
Most search result pages contain filters that may be switched on or off; these include specific types of documents, the source of documents (often parliamentary committees), date ranges, and a number of other data points.
Tip: Use filters to narrow results to more relevantly match your interest.