PROPAGANDA FLOOD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 August 1943, Page 3

PROPAGANDA FLOOD

IN AUSTRALIAN ELECTION CAMPAIGN

SAVAGE PARTY CONFLICT. ' WITH MORE RED HERRINGS THAN REAL ISSUES. (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, August 18. “Never before has the individual elector suffered such a flood of propaganda,” says the Sydney “Telegraph” in an editorial commenting on the closing days of the campaigning for Saturday's Australian Federal election. From today no election broadcasts are permitted, but in the past three days eight Sydney radio stations alone broadcast 76 talks from five minutes to an hour in length. In addition, hundreds of brief announcements have been made. “Hardly anybody went io the election meetings,” adds the paper, so the candidates pursued the elector to his tireside.” Both on the air as well as through newspaper advertising columns, the campaign has been waged with almost savage intensity for four weeks past. Political commentators widely deplore that the campaign has provided more “red herrings than real issues.” The “Telegraph” says: “Discussions, ranging from the Brisbane Line to the responsibility for the export of pig iron to Japan, have, revealed some more or less authentic history, but have touched not one of the pressing issues Australia has to fight. From the moment Mr Curtin claimed that Labour had saved Australia from the Japanese, our future and all the great problems surrounding it has been lost in a game of 'you did —you didn’t.’ ” “Our leaders will have to get out of this habit of mutual belittlement if Australia is not to be weakened internally and depreciated abroad,” declares the "Sydney Morning Herald” in an editorial. The paper adds that the election campaign provided no evidence of any strong shift'of public opinion such as would be likely to change the character of Parliament. -

A Melbourne “Herald” Australiawide public opinion poll credits civilian support with being evenly divided between Labour and the joint Opposition parties. This leads to the assumption that the armed services’ vote, averaging about 10,000 in each of the 74 electorates, is likely to decide many marginal seats. „