PUBLICITY ABROAD

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21978, 23 March 1946, Page 5

PUBLICITY ABROAD

AUSTRALIAN SERVICE MINISTER DEFENDS WORK CANBERRA. March 22. In the course of an address in which he refuted charges that the _ department was an agency for publicising the present Government, Mr. A. A. Calwell, Minister of Information, said that since .the end of the war the department’s small staff of expert journalists, photographers and cinematographers had concentrated on making Australia more widely and more favourably known abroad. It maintained representatives in London,_ New York, San Francisco, Ottawa. Rio de Janeiro, Paris and Delhi, and had appointed information officers to Australian Trade Commissioners at London, New York, Cairo, Bombay and Singapore. In Australia it maintained writing, short-wave _ broadcasting and still photographic units and films organisation to supply these overseas men with a constant flow of material depicting the Australian way of life in all its aspects. In January 25 well-illustrated articles, all of considerable length, were placed by the department’s New York bureau in influential publications. A booklet, “Australia and Your Future,” distributed in London to aspiring immigrants, had created .an unprecedented demand which, this year, was epected to exceed 300,000.