Milestones
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Details
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Document source
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1901–1914
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January
1901
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The Australian
Constitution gives the Australian Government power to make laws with
respect to ‘postal, telegraphic, telephonic and other like services’.
No specific ‘press power’ listed, but
the Government still able to make laws that affect the press.
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Specific
power over broadcasting: section 51(v).Powers affecting the press: section 51(i)—to make laws in relation to trade and commerce with other countries and among the states—and section 51(ii)—the taxation power.
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March
1901
Protectionist Party forms government after first Australian federal election.
Edmund Barton becomes Prime Minister. The Protectionists also form government
following elections in 1903 and 1906. Alfred Deakin is Prime Minister.[30]
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November
1901
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Tasmania
lobbies the Federal Government to establish point-to- point wireless
telegraphy which would enable direct communication with the mainland.
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R
Curnow, ‘The origins of Australian broadcasting‘, in R Curnow and I
Bedford, Initiative and organisation, FW Cheshire, Sydney, 1963, p.
50.
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October
1902
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Marconi Company submits a proposal to the Government to connect Australia
and New Zealand by radio. The Postmaster-General’s Department opposes the
scheme arguing that messages are already transmitted more cheaply by cable.
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Curnow, op. cit., p. 51.
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1902[31]
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The Herald & Weekly Times (HWT) is incorporated as a public company.
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Museum Victoria, Herald and Weekly Times information page
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October
1905
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Wireless Telegraphy Act 1905 (WT Act) is enacted to give control of licensing
and operational and technical standards for wireless broadcasting to the
Postmaster-General’s Department.[32]
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Wireless Telegraphy Act 1905[33]
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August
1906
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After demonstrations of Morse Code communications,
Marconi Company wireless stations are set up in Queenscliff in Victoria and
Davenport in Tasmania, and the Government sets aside funding for the
development of wireless.
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A Chapman, ‘Answer to Question without notice: Supply’
[Questioner: H Wilkes], House of Representatives, Debates,
22 August 1906, pp. 3251–2.
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April
1910
The Labor Party, under the leadership of Andrew Fisher, wins the 1910 federal
election.
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July
1910
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Businessman
and philanthropist HR Denison forms Sun Newspapers Ltd to take over the
publication of papers based in Sydney, the Sunday Sun and the Star
(which he renames The Sun). Denison remains chairman of this company
until 1940.[34]
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HR Denison, Australian Dictionary of
Biography entry.
D
Zwar, In search of Keith Murdoch, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1980, pp.
17–18.
J
Denison, Building a nation: Hugh Robert Denison, author published,
Mosman, 2004.
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October
1910
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Following
the recommendations of a Senate Select Committee on press cables, the
Government subsidises an independent cable service, the Independent Press
Cable Service, for three years. All newspapers are able to subscribe to the
service at rates set by the Government.
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Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics, Official
Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, no. 4, 1911.
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January
1911
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The
Land newspaper for primary
producers begins publication. The paper is incorporated in the 1920s, and in
the 1970s it expands to purchase rural and regional publications.
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V Graham, The story of the Land, 1911–2011,
John Dwyer, North Richmond, Victoria, 2011.
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1912
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After
funding is set aside in 1909 for wireless installation, a network of
government-operated Morse Code stations is established to transmit telegrams
and provide shipping information.
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B
Carty, On the air: Australian radio history, author published, 2011,
p. 2 and Curnow, op. cit., pp. 64–6.
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May
1913
The Deakin Liberal Party, under the leadership of Joseph Cook, is elected to office.[35]
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July
1913
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Amalgamated
Wireless Australasia (AWA) is formed from a merger of the Marconi and
Telefunken companies. The company becomes a pioneer in early radio
broadcasting. Hugh Denison is a major shareholder.
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A
Moran and C Keating, The A to Z of Australian radio and television,
Scarecrow Press, Lanham, 2009, p. xix.
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August
1914 In July 1914 the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian
throne by Serbian nationalists leads to an Austro-Hungarian invasion of
Serbia, the mobilisation of Russian troops in defence of Serbia and Germany
declaring war on Russia and France. When Germany then invades neutral
Belgium, Britain declares war on Germany and World War I begins.
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September
1914
The Labor Party wins the federal poll.
Andrew Fisher is Prime Minister until October 1915 when he is replaced by WM
(Billy) Hughes. The Labor Party splits in 1916 over the issue of
conscription. Hughes remains Prime Minister, first as head of a National
Labor Government (1916–17) and then as the head of a Nationalist Government
(from February 1917).
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1915–1922
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1915–1919
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Administration
of WT Act is transferred to the Royal Australian Navy during WWI for
security purposes.
Experimental radio sets are confiscated by the Navy and licences to operate
radios are revoked.
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Moran
and Keating, op. cit. and Curnow, op. cit., pp. 66–9.
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1915–1919
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Newspapers
are censored for the duration of the War ‘to restrain pro-German and pacifist
propaganda’.
Newspaper proprietors and journalists complain that they are unfairly treated
as ‘vehemently suspect’ by Australia’s military censors.
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G
Souter, Company of Heralds: a century and a half of Australian publishing,
Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1981, pp. 116–7 and P Coleman
‘Censorship’, in B Griffen-Foley, ed., A companion to the Australian media,
Australian Scholarly, North Melbourne, 2014, p. 87.
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May
1915
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John
Wren and Benjamin Nathan buy the Brisbane Daily Mail.
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John Wren, Australian Dictionary of Biography entry and
Zwar, op. cit., p. 81.
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April
1916 |
Ezra
Norton inherits the newspaper interests of his father, John Norton, owner of
the Sydney weekly tabloid, Truth. |
Australian
Dictionary of Biography entries for John Norton and Ezra Norton and S Hall, ‘The Norton Family’, in Griffen-Foley, ed., pp. 317–8. |
October
1916
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John
Fairfax and Sons becomes a limited company.
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Souter,
op. cit., p. 120.
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May
1917
The conservative Nationalist Party, a
merger between National Labor and the Liberal Party, wins the May federal
election.
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March
1918
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As a
result of press complaints about political, rather than security censorship
that newspaper proprietors argue is imposed upon them during the second
conscription referendum, a board, upon which editors are represented, is set
up to advise the government censors.
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‘A muzzled press’, The Australian Worker, 22 March 1917, p.
14.
(See
also comment in Box 2.)
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October
1918
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The
Government announces in late October 1918 that the press will be required to
reduce newsprint consumption by 30 per cent. This restriction is not imposed
due to the end of the War.
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‘Sydney letter’, Kapunda Herald, 29 November 1918,
p. 4.
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November
1918
WW1 ends at 11am on the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918 when
Germany signs an armistice that had been prepared by Britain and France.
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March
1919
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Smith’s
Newspapers is established by Claude McKay, James Joynton Smith and Robert
Clyde Packer (Frank Packer’s father). The company publishes Smith’s Weekly
to 1950.
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Australian
Dictionary of Biography entries for Claude McKay, Joynton Smith and Robert Clyde Packer
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August
1919
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AWA
publicly broadcasts music and speech in Sydney (and in October 1920 to
parliamentarians in Melbourne). AWA establishes the first direct radio communication
between Australia and the United Kingdom.
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Carty,
op. cit., p. 2 and Curnow, op. cit., p. 93.
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September
1919
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The WT
Act is amended to give the Federal Government the same control over
wireless telephony (voice transmissions) as it has over wireless telegraphy.
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Wireless Telegraphy Act 1919.
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December
1919
Billy Hughes’ Nationalists, aided by
conservative country parties, form government following the election.
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October
1920
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Control
of wireless administration is returned from the Navy to the
Postmaster-General’s Department.
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B
Fraser and A Atkinson, (eds), Macquarie encyclopedia of Australian events,
rev. edn, Macquarie Library, 1997, p. 526.
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January
1921
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The ‘Hughes Proclamation’ extends the
remit of the Customs Act 1901 to ban communist and Sinn Fein
publications which are deemed as seditious.[36]
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Coleman, op. cit.
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1921
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The
first radio licence is issued to Charles MacLurcan for 2CM in Sydney.
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Radio
Heritage Foundation.
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1921
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Station
3ME, the forerunner of Radio Australia, begins broadcasting.
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Carty,
op. cit., p. 1.
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1921
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Keith Murdoch becomes editor of the
Herald and Weekly Times company (HWT).[37]
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Keith Murdoch, Australian Dictionary of Biography entry.
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March
1922
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The
Federal Government signs an agreement with AWA to develop, manufacture and
sell radio equipment. The Government is a shareholder in the company.
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Moran
and Keating, op. cit., p. xx, Curnow, op. cit., pp. 80–5 and J
Given ‘Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd’ in Griffen-Foley, ed., op.
cit., p. 22.
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September
1922
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HR
Denison attempts to challenge Murdoch’s HWT in the Melbourne market by
producing the Sun
News-Pictorial and, later, the Evening Sun.
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Denison,
Building a nation, op. cit., p. 67.
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1922
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Postmaster
General WG Gibson arranges meetings with interest groups, the intent of which
is to devise a system that will support radio broadcasting.
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Curnow,
op. cit. p. 94.
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December
1922
Coalition of anti-Labor parties wins the federal election—the Bruce-Page Nationalist-Country Coalition Government
sworn in with Stanley Bruce as Prime Minister.
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