Page 1215 - Week 04 - Thursday, 21 March 1991
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Now we come to the rights and wrongs of preventing private individuals or private political organisations from freely campaigning in the election process at their own expense or at an individual's own expense. There has been an inadequate public debate on this matter, and I am glad that we are having this debate today. The matter has been raised very quickly and suddenly approved by the Federal Labor Party in a high-minded manner - certainly not in a manner designed to respect full freedom of speech, either in the Federal Parliament or throughout the nation.
Now I come to the question of political advertising on the electronic media. I very much agree about the distinction between television and radio. I find that the most expensive item for a small party such as ours is things such as full-page advertisements in newspapers. That is far more expensive than radio. I do want to say right away that I am very ambivalent about this matter. I hope that Australia will never reach the situation in existence in the United States. Whether in presidential or congressional elections, political campaigning on the electronic media, especially by way of television, has reached levels of expense which give unfair and unreasonable advantage to very wealthy individuals and organisations.
Like Ms Follett, I was on one of those political tours and we visited the Republican and Democratic parties, at both Federal and local levels. The amounts of money involved were horrific; we are talking of hundreds of millions of dollars. Most of us here, and I think most Australians, are opposed to those extremes, as indeed are millions of Americans. Millions of Americans have reacted against the extraordinary extravagance of the American political election system. However, the Americans are trying to reform this. There have been relatively successful measures in recent years at Federal and State levels to curb those extremes and there are groups working to curb them even more.
It has also to be said that there is a level of generous public support via the annual income tax return for some appropriate levels of expenditure. In every person's tax return you tick a square to indicate whether you wish a small amount to go to election campaigning or not. Yet I wonder how many of America's depressed under-classes have an adequate voice in public debate in the electronic media. Has the USA gone far enough to ensure equality of political representation in the media? I do not believe that it has, and I would not want us to follow that kind of example.
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