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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 8 Hansard (28 August) . . Page.. 2586 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

That is fair enough. Reaction shots of a member are permitted only if the member is referred to in debate or if the member has sought information which is being supplied by a member having the call. Again, that is a fairly safe approach to take, but it might cause one to lose a little of the flavour of the place on occasions.

Mr Moore: It is a conservative approach.

MR HUMPHRIES: It is a conservative approach. Mr Moore has accurately summarised my view of it. Panning along the benches is not allowed. Coverage of the galleries is not permitted. Close-up shots of members' papers are not permitted. That is fair enough; I would not argue with that. Mr Speaker, I simply say that I wonder whether we are not going a little too far in restricting what might be possible. My assessment of the coverage of debates in the House of Representatives and the Senate is that they tend to be very wooden presentations, fairly unenlivening for the community that might be listening to or watching them.

MR SPEAKER: The Speaker cannot do anything about that, Mr Humphries.

MR HUMPHRIES: Well, no. You do your best, Mr Speaker, I am sure. As a person who has observed such debates live in the past, I wish to state that, on occasions, those broadcasts can be extremely tedious - not necessarily because what is being debated is tedious, but because some of the life and colour, which does manifest itself on the floor, sometimes to the chagrin of the speaker concerned, does not translate into the broadcast, partly because of the restrictions placed here. I personally do not see any reason why a camera should not pan over the benches, to get an impression of people's reactions, rather than the reaction of one particular member who might be angrily reacting to a reference to him or her or who might be listening intently for the answer to a question that he or she has asked. That kind of restriction can be, I think, a little overrestrictive.

Mr Speaker, I would simply say to the house that it is fair enough to pick up the restrictions of the House of Representatives, but we are not the House of Representatives. We have different criteria for lots of things that we do in this place. I think that, if anything, we should ensure that the broadcasts, particularly on the television, of proceedings in this place ought to be interesting enough to make people want to watch them. That, partly, is an exercise of how well we do our jobs in this place as imparters of information and persuaders to a particular point of view, but it is also partly a function of the way in which broadcasts can occur. Perhaps we should reconsider these restrictions - maybe not at this point in time. Maybe we should start from the premise of what the House of Representatives does, but certainly in the longer term we should ask ourselves whether some restrictions might not be against the interests of public relation to, and interest in, the work that is going on in this place.

MR BERRY (Leader of the Opposition) (11.15): Mr Speaker, I am no longer involved in the committee which dealt with this issue, but I was involved as these principles developed. I think the best way to describe them is: Putting one's toe in the water; working out what might be in the best interests of the community in respect of broadcasting; and doing it in a way in which the Assembly itself cannot be satirised and generally made a circus of but also in a way that relevant and interesting information finds its way out into the community.

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