Radio Electorate Talks

From January 1954 until early 1983, Malcolm Fraser made a weekly radio broadcast to his Wannon electorate. The talks were broadcast on Sunday evenings on radio station 3HA Hamilton and repeated on 3YB Warrnambool and 3LK Western Victoria. Mr Fraser recorded these talks on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and the tapes were mailed to radio station 3HA for broadcasting. The text of the electoral talks was mailed to newspapers in Mr Fraser's electorate.

The talks cover both local Wannon issues – such as the wool industry and postal services – and, increasingly, topics of broader national and international interest such as taxation and education. The radio broadcasts for 1974-75 increasingly focus on controversial issues associated with the Whitlam Labor Government, for example Senator Lionel Murphy and the 1975 budget. Thus the talks form a unique resource to study the development of a Prime Minister's political philosophy and opinion on matters of both international and local importance.

The University of Melbourne Archives has digitised over 700 of these talks. They have been supplemented in parts by general press releases to national media and the electorate of Wannon. The talk transcripts have been provided in .pdf format (via the Institutional Repository) and .txt format (download file: 2 Mb). They may be downloaded and used for non-commercial purposes provided attribution is made to the Malcolm Fraser collection at the University of Melbourne Archives.