Parliament on “the Wireless” in Australia

Abstract

Australia's parliament allowed the radio broadcast of proceedings in 1946, a decade after New Zealand, but well before the “Mother of all Parliaments” in 1978. In keeping with Australia's reputation as a pioneering democracy, early interest in broadcasting parliamentary debates can be traced to the 1920s. In the formative years of “wireless” it was imagined radio might close the gap between parliaments and the public. Proceedings of the New South Wales parliament were actually broadcast for several weeks during 1932 (and before the New Zealand parliament institutionalised this practice). Tasmania experimented with parliamentary broadcasting in 1934. Australia's embrace of parliamentary broadcasting in 1946 was less carefully planned than has been suggested. It was an opportunistic, caucus‐initiated Chifley government measure driven by a long‐held ALP concern about newspaper bias. It was however generally justified as reform to bring the people to their Parliament and, remarkably, did have bipartisan support.