Salaries

Salaries for Court Reporters within the higher Courts system (District and Supreme Courts) of New South Wales, Australia, are as follows (figures shown are in Australian dollars):

Court Reporter
			Aug 2006
	Year 1		$66796
	Year 2		$68794
	Year 3		$71661
	Year 4		$73938
Senior Court Reporter
	Year 1		$76142
	Year 2		$78283
	Year 3		$81479
	Year 4		$83907

Parliamentary Reporter (New South Wales Parliament)

Similar to Court Reporter rates.

Media Stenocaptioner

Salary negotiated with employer and subject to contract. Packages estimated in the range of $75000 to over $100K per year.

Skills demand

The major employer of Machine Shorthand writers in New South Wales is the New South Wales Attorney Generals Department. Each Australian State has a similar government organisation providing reporting services to the courts and judicial system. Similar systems operate in the U.S., UK and Ireland. For many years there has been unmet demand for court reporters, with vacancy rates much higher than the supply of new entrants to the industry. This is reflected in the very high remuneration levels commanded internationally by court reporters.

There are a number of private firms that employ reporters for court, tribunal and commission hearings undertaken on a contract basis. Most of these reporters provide their services on a full-time freelance basis. In many cases this employment provides the opportunity for intercity and overseas travel. Salaries are negotiated between the freelance reporter and the employer, but salaries at the very top of those available in the market place are available in this sector.

The New South Wales Parliament has a reporting staff of about 12 members. It is a much smaller employer than the Attorney General's Department, but it is anticipated that over the next 5 years there will be regularly occurring vacancies as a result of retirements of existing staff. Each Australian State has its own Parliament with its own internal reporting service. The Australian Federal Parliament in the Australian Capital Territory also has its own internal reporting service.

Media Stenocaptioning is an area of the industry with an increasing need for Machine Shorthand writers to provide live-to-air captions of television programs. The Australian Caption Centre is the major employer of live-to-air reporters, but there are smaller private employers, and some television stations employ their own staff directly.

Many Australian reporters have taken the opportunity during their careers to live and work overseas, for example at the BBC and in the British Parliament. On the other hand, reporters from other countries have taken up opportunities to work temporarily in Australia as a reporter or media stenocaptioner, or have chosen to take up residency.

The major area of growth is for 'real-time' or daily transcript production. CAT (Computer Aided Transcription) technology has for many years been at the stage where high quality verbatim transcripts can be produced in 'real time', by a Machine Shorthand reporter, that is, the text is produced only seconds after a speakers' words are heard. The 'live' running transcript appears on computer screens placed in the court room. There is rapidly growing demand in the legal profession, which often cannot be met, for immediate ('real time') or daily transcript, as it provides advantages in the formulation and conduct of a case. Reporters producing live transcripts typically write at shorthand speeds in excess of 200 words per minute. The Australian industry is prominent on the international real-time reporting stage. An emerging trend in Australia and internationally is for remote captioning, where work is undertaken at a location distant from the client organization.

The development of voice recognition software as well as audio-taping and digital recording are often cited as alternative technologies to machine shorthand. All such technologies are additional tools available to the transcription industry, however they do not match the accuracy of real time machine shorthand computer-compatible reporting. Audio recording still requires the later production of a typed transcript and is not a ‘live’ technology. Voice recognition is still subject to a lengthy and often challenging editing process and is not regarded by transcript production organizations as a real-time transcript alternative. The preferred method of real time reporting by the vast majority of courts systems and all media stenocaptioning organizations is machine shorthand for its unmatched degree of accuracy and speed. Until such time, if ever, as software reaches the standards of the legal system for accuracy in respect of recording of evidence in court going to the innocence or guilt of an accused person, or matches the accuracy required in public broadcasting, computer-compatible machine shorthand will remain the best and most viable method of real time transcript production.