Political and Parliamentary Speech in Australia

This article considers how oratory is employed by politicians and accessed by citizens in Australia. It begins by contrasting the oratorical styles of the two longest serving prime ministers, Robert Menzies and John Howard; the first governing from 1949 to 1966, the other governing in an era of electronic (and now digital) media from 1996. This allows us to reflect on how political speech has changed from a time of public meetings, the pre-eminence of parliamentary discourse and the reproduction of political speeches in daily newspapers, to an era where political speech is mediated through television, radio and the Internet