Canberra Press Gallery

Last updated

The Canberra Press Gallery, officially called the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery, is the name given to the approximately 180 journalists and their support staff, including producers, editors and camera crews, who report the workings of the Australian Parliament. The name derives from the press galleries, which are enclosed viewing areas above the chambers of the Senate and the House of Representatives, which the President and the Speaker have allocated to the media.

Contents

Use of the name

The expression "Canberra Press Gallery" also refers to the association of Gallery journalists which represents their professional interests in dealing with the Parliament. The current President of the Gallery is David Speers, host and presenter for ABC TV's Insiders. The vice-president is Andrew Meares and the secretary is Eliza Borrello.

Apart from the one and a half hours per sitting day of Question Time, journalists spend little time in the actual press gallery overlooking the floor of Parliament. Another area, also named the "press gallery" refers to the office space within the Parliament building, above the Senate chamber which includes television studios and radio booths where the gallery journalists spend most of their time compiling stories and communicating with editors. [1] [2] [3]

Role and influence

Australian academics have described the gallery as 'collectively responsible for the great majority of news stories about federal politics that appear in Australian Print and broadcast media'. [2]

Many of Australia's most influential journalists, such as Paul Bongiorno, Malcolm Farr, Michelle Grattan, Laurie Oakes, Mark Riley, Hugh Riminton, Dennis Shanahan, Karen Middleton, Sharri Markson, Chris Uhlmann and David Speers are gallery members.

Media affiliations

Studios for the major TV networks are among the gallery; including the ABC, SBS, Channel Nine, Channel Seven, Channel TEN and other media partners.

Major newspapers that participate in the gallery include The Australian Financial Review , The Sydney Morning Herald , The Age , The Australian , The Daily Telegraph , the Herald Sun , The Courier-Mail , The West Australian , The Advertiser , The Canberra Times and Inside Canberra , as well as playing host to Fairfax radio's 2UE/3AW and to Sydney station 2GB.

Related Research Articles

Parliament House, Canberra Seat of the Parliament of Australia

Parliament House, also referred to as Capital Hill or simply Parliament, is the meeting place of the Parliament of Australia, and the seat of the legislative branch of the Australian Government. Located in Canberra, the Parliament building is situated on the southern apex of the Parliamentary Triangle atop Capital Hill, at the meeting point of Commonwealth, Adelaide, Canberra and Kings Avenue enclosed by the State Circle.

Gary Humphries Australian politician

Gary John Joseph Humphries is a Deputy President of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. He was a member of the Australian Senate representing the Australian Capital Territory for the Liberal Party of Australia from 2003 to 2013. He was the Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory from 2000 to 2001; and was elected to the first parliament of the Australian Capital Territory, in 1989, later representing the Molonglo electorate until 2003.

Laurie Oakes Australian journalist

Laurie Oakes is a retired Australian journalist. He worked in the Canberra Press Gallery from 1969 to 2017, covering the Parliament of Australia and federal elections for print, radio, and television.

Cheryl Zena Kernot is an Australian politician, academic, and political activist. She was a member of the Australian Senate representing Queensland for the Australian Democrats from 1990 to 1997, and the fifth leader of the Australian Democrats from 1993 to 1997. In 1997, she resigned from the Australian Democrats, joined the Australian Labor Party, and won the seat of Dickson at the 1998 federal election. She was defeated at the 2001 federal election. Kernot was an unsuccessful independent candidate to represent New South Wales in the Australian Senate in the 2010 federal election.

2007 Australian federal election Election for the 42nd Parliament of Australia

The 2007 Australian federal election was held in Australia on 24 November 2007. All 150 seats in the House of Representatives and 40 of the seats in the 76-member Senate were up for election. The election featured a 39-day campaign, with 13.6 million Australians enrolled to vote.

John Faulkner Australian politician

John Philip Faulkner is an Australian former Labor Party politician who was a Senator for New South Wales from 1989 to 2015. He was a Cabinet Minister in the Keating, Rudd and Gillard Governments.

Michelle Grattan Australian journalist (born 1944)

Michelle Grattan is an Australian journalist who was the first woman to become editor of an Australian metropolitan daily newspaper. Specialising in political journalism, she has written for and edited many significant Australian newspapers. She is currently the chief political correspondent with The Conversation, Australia's largest independent news website.

Alan John Fitzgerald was an Australian author, journalist and satirist. He was known for his unwavering opposition to the Australian republican movement and worked alongside Tony Abbott during Abbott's tenure as president of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy (ACM) during the 1990s.

Malcolm Farr is a political journalist in the Canberra Press Gallery covering the Parliament of Australia in Canberra, Australia.

National Press Club (Australia) Press club in Australia

The National Press Club is an association of primarily news journalists, but also includes academics, business people and members of the public service, and is based in Canberra, Australia.

David Speers Australian journalist

David Gordon Speers is an Australian journalist and host of Insiders on ABC TV.

Scott Ryan (Australian politician) Australian politician

Scott Michael Ryan is a former Australian politician who is the High Commissioner of Australia to Canada since December 2021. He served as Senator for Victoria from 2008 to 2021, representing the Liberal Party. He was President of the Senate from 2017 to 2021, having previously been a minister in the Turnbull Government from 2016 to 2017.

Rob Chalmers Australian political journalist

Robin Donald Chalmers was an independent Australian political journalist and commentator. The Canberra Press Gallery's longest serving member, from 1951 to 2011, his career spanned over 60 years reporting on the Parliament of Australia. Chiefly using the mediums of print and radio, his audience consisted mainly of other well-informed interested parties in the media, politics, industry and government, not a face often seen by the mainstream general public; he was, as described by the prime minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, "a journalist's journalist" . In the later half of Chalmers career, he was best known for his roles with the independent, economic and political, weekly newsletter Inside Canberra.

2016 Australian federal election Election for the 45th Parliament of Australia

The 2016 Australian federal election was a double dissolution election held on Saturday 2 July to elect all 226 members of the 45th Parliament of Australia, after an extended eight-week official campaign period. It was the first double dissolution election since the 1987 election and the first under a new voting system for the Senate that replaced group voting tickets with optional preferential voting.

Andrew John Broad is a former Australian politician who represented Mallee in the Australian House of Representatives from 2013 to 2019 as a member of The Nationals. He was Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister from September 2018 until December 2018. He did not run in the seat of Mallee at the federal election in May 2019.

Linda Reynolds Australian politician

Linda Karen Reynolds is an Australian politician. She is a member of the Liberal Party and has served as a Senator for Western Australia since 2014. She held senior ministerial office as a cabinet minister in the Morrison government from 2019 to 2022.

Laura Tingle Australian journalist and author (born 1961)

Laura Margaret Tingle is an Australian journalist and author.

Phillip Coorey is an Australian journalist, currently serving as the political editor for The Australian Financial Review.

Lenore Taylor is an Australian journalist. She has been the editor of The Guardian Australia since May 2016.

Andrew Probyn is an Australian journalist and television presenter known for his role at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

References

  1. Clem Lloyd, Parliament and the Press: A History of the Canberra Press Gallery (1988)
  2. 1 2 Ian Ward, "The media, power and politics," in Andrew Parkin et el, Government, Politics, Power and Policy in Australia, Pearson Education Australia (2006)
  3. Julian Fitzgerald Inside the Parliamentary Press Gallery: Seeing Beyond the Spin Clareville Press 2008