Bringing the voters back in: a Canadian model for Australia?

In 1993 federal elections were held in Australia and Canada alike. Whereas a complacent Australian media framed their coverage of the 1993 campaign in ways which cast voters in the role of passive consumers of politics, the Canadian news media experimented with various inclusive strategies which were intended to install ordinary Canadians at the very centre of their election coverage. The most publicised of these laudable experiments involved a series of television town hall meetings carried by the CBC’s Prime Time news program. The Canadian media’s innovative coverage demonstrates that it is possible to approach elections as something more than a contest between leaders and parties, and to see campaigns as a public discourse in which ordinary voters can be given a voice. It is in this sense that the media coverage of the 1993 Canadian election offers Australian news and current affairs journalists a model for a fresh, more inclusive and democratic approach to reporting election campaigns in this country.