DEBATES ON AIR

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 21830, 28 September 1945, Page 3

DEBATES ON AIR

CANBERRA HOUSE

EXPERIMENTS MOOTED

COMMISSION’S PROPOSALS (10.30 a.m.) CANBERRA. Sept. 28.

A recommendation favouring Parliamentary broadcasts was made by the Parliament standing committee on broadcasting in a report submitted to Parliament yesterday.

The committee recommended also that such broadcasts should be given absolute privilege. The report recommended that the Broadcasting Commission, Post Office and Parliamentary authorities should consider the question of the selection of mutually acceptable experimental periods for both Houses of Parliament and that overall control of broadcasts should be vested in the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House. Other recommendations were that during the experiments period the whole of the proceedings in the Chamber . concerned should be broadcast from the main national stations, except during a short period when “straight” news sessions were on the air. No provision should be made for any prearranged selection of speakers at particular times. There should be “straight” broadcasts of proceedings exactly as they occurred in the normal transaction of Parliamentary business, with the qualification that during divisions and such-like intervals an appropriate official, who should be an officer of the commission, should broadcast an impartial description of what was taking place