Upholding the penny principle’ : the Australian press, Empire communications and the 1929 Beam Wireless Select Committee

This article analyses the establishment in February 1929 of the Senate Select Committee on Beam Wireless Charges, and examines the role played by powerful local communication interests, including the Australian newspaper press, in the development of Australia’s communications with the outside world. Its analysis of the Beam Wireless Committee evidence confirms the incipient nationalism of Australian communications policy between the wars, in so far as it argued for the continuing separation of cable and wireless interests as a means of further reducing the cost of international messages and increasing public access to the new technology of beam wireless. The Beam Wireless Committee, in which the media played a notable part, represented the culmination of a decade of popular local expectation concerning the advent of cheap, modern communications with the outside world, articulating in turn the needs and cultural isolation of a steady stream of immigrants from Great Britain.