PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES

Northern Advocate, 30 January 1936, Page 3

PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES

POSSIBILITY OF BROADCAST

[Per Press Association. — Copyright .l WELLINGTON. This Day. There is a good prospect of political debates being broadcast by radio by the New Zealand Parliament in the near future.

The Prime Minister, Hon. M. J. Savage, stated yesterday that the Government had instructed department experts to prepare a report on the possibilities of facilities for radio broadcasting from Parliament House.

“The idea is to broadcast main debates only,” Mr Savage said. “We cannot bring the people to Parliament, so the only alternative is to take Parliament to the people by means, of the

microphone. “I cannot give you any details of the way it should be done, or of the facilities for enabling individual speeches to be broadcast at any given time,” Mr Savage continued. “These are matters for the radio technicians. AR that can be said at the moment is that a report on the plans of a radio installation at Parliament House has been called for.”

Questioned as to the probable influence of broadcasting on the future quality of Parliamentary debates —it having been discreetly suggested that many people had not been very enthusiastic about the standard of debate in recent years—the Prime Minister smilingly admitted that possibly, in the past, many of those who spoke in Parliament may have spoken too much and too carelessly at times, or had not

said well enough the little they had to say. It seemed to him, however, that if the men. who would speak in future, knew that their words were being broadcast to thousands of people listening in ambush, they would give greater attention to the matter qnd the manner of their speech.