Bernie was born in Brisbane, Queensland, in 1942 and attended Buranda Boys' for his primary schooling and Cavendish Road High for his secondary education. Taking a commercial course at Cavendish Road, he was trained in shorthand, typing and bookkeeping. He entered the Queensland Public Service in December 1958 and was appointed as a trainee reporter at the State Reporting Bureau at Parliament House in Brisbane in 1959. He was promoted as a Reporter Division III, in the same year and worked as a court reporter in the criminal and civil court jurisdictions, as well as working on a variety of royal commissions and commissions of inquiry, travelling widely throughout the State.
In November 1963, he applied for appointment to the Department of the Parliamentary Reporting Staff (Hansard) at Parliament House in Canberra and was advised in January 1964 of his success at the entry tests to the service. He took up his position in Canberra on 2 April 1964 and, at the time, was the youngest person ever appointed to the Commonwealth parliamentary Hansard staff. He reported in both the House of Representatives chamber and the Senate chamber and covered a variety of other assignments including parliamentary standing and select committee inquiries, Premiers' Conferences, meetings of Commonwealth/State ministers covering a variety of portfolios and other national and international meetings for which Hansard's services were sought from and approved by the Parliament. These included ANZUS, SEATO, the Five Powers conferences, World Health Organisation and Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and Inter-Parliamentary Union meetings.
In 1968, he was assigned permanently, in non-sitting periods, to the newly appointed House of Representatives Select Committee on Wildlife Conservation. Over a four year period, that committee travelled throughout Australia and its territories investigating wildlife issues and setting the pace for the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Conservation which was established in 1972.
He was a member of the Hansard team which reported the Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meeting (CHOGRM) in 1979 in Sydney when a bomb exploded at the meeting's venue, killing three persons. In 1982, he led the Hansard team covering the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Melbourne, which under Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser was attended by such Commonwealth leaders as Margaret Thatcher, Pierre Trudeau, Indira Gandhi, 'Piggy' Muldoon and Lee Kwan Yew as well as the first appearance of Prime Minister Robert Mugabe from Zimbabwe.
He progressed through the ranks of Hansard and became Leader of Staff (House of Representatives) in 1978 and was appointed Assistant Principal Parliamentary Reporter (Deputy Head of the Department) in 1984. He became the Department's representative on the New and Permanent Parliament House construction authority and served on some 16 committees engaged in the design and building of the new parliamentary building on Capital Hill. As well, he undertook the task of adviser to the Presiding Officers (the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President of the Senate) on the proposed sound and vision systems (broadcasting and television services) in the new building, which was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1988.
At the same time, he established cadet Hansard reporter training schemes at the colleges of advanced education in Canberra and Brisbane, and each year recruited six new trainee reporters to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Hansard staff. These courses provided training for many others who joined State and private reporting services.
In 1989, he acted at Principal Parliamentary Reporter when the Department was reorganised and the following year was appointed Chief Hansard Reporter in the new Department which provided Hansard, audio/visual and computer services in the new parliamentary building. He undertook the computerisation of the Hansard service, a project over two years, which introduced word processing, computerised shorthand, delivery of transcripts to the offices of members and senators throughout Australia and later Hansard in all forms on the Internet and effected significant savings in printing and production costs. He pioneered the use of digital audio, transmitted sound from interstate committee hearings live to Canberra for transcription, and introduced voice recognition into Hansard's operations after working closely with DragonDictate to establish the first Australian speech recognition system. He was a member of the Macquarie Dictionary panel and the Style Council.
He represented the Australian Parliament at the triennial conference of the Commonwealth Hansard Editors' Association (CHEA) meeting in Nova Scotia in 1990 and undertook thereafter a four-week visit to shorthand reporting operations and manufacturers of shorthand capture machinery in the USA and Canada. He was elected President of the CHEA, hosted its next conference in Canberra in 1993, and attending the following meeting in London in 1996. He also attended and hosted, between 1990 and 1999, meetings of the Australasian Hansard Editors' Association in Australia, Fiji and Papua New Guinea.
After several years representing the Presiding Officers on the National Committee planning the Centenary of Federation celebrations, he undertook fulltime duties on that body from 1999 to 2002, being appointed as the Executive Co-ordinator of the Centenary of Parliament. He was involved specifically in planning and facilitating the nationally televised centenary meetings of the Commonwealth Parliament in Melbourne at the Royal Exhibition Building, attended by some 7,000 persons, and the Victorian Parliament House, with an attendance of 2,100 people, in May 2001 and State and Territory commemorations through 2001 culminating in a nationally televised concert from the New Parliament House in December 2001.
He retired from the parliamentary service and the position of Chief Hansard Reporter in May 2002. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Shorthand Reporters' Association of Australia in 2004.
During his working life, he also wrote television drama and comedy scripts for national TV, was a sporting commentator for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, produced his own programs for the Print Handicapped Radio network and served for 14 years on the board of the Royal Canberra Golf Club, becoming its President for successive two year terms from 1998 to 2002, staging three international golfing tournaments at the club during that time. He was also Hansard's representative on the Australian Journalists' Association for several years and served on the general committee of the National Press Club.
In retirement, he has completed 27 hours of oral history for Old Parliament House, is writing his memoirs, has delivered lectures and speeches on Commonwealth Hansard and continues to provide advice on Hansard services. In June of 2008, at Old Parliament House, he spoke on 'The Humour of Hansard' to an overflow audience at Old Parliament House and has produced privately a DVD of that talk, which he is donating to the Parliament, Australian Archives and the National Library of Australia. Other talks are scheduled for this year.
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