MEDIA RELEASE: Self Broadcast Campaign - Australian First for DLP

Democratic Labor Party candidate, Peter Kavanagh, appears to be the first in Australia and among the first anywhere in the world to use YouTube as a campaign and communication tool in a state or national election. Mr Kavanagh has published the YouTube videos on his campaign blog.

"The use of YouTube for the first time in a political campaign in Australia signals the opening of a new channel of communication in political debate. For decades small parties have complained they did not have the money to access media. Tools like YouTube and weblogs make getting messages across to a large audience much easier," Peter Kavanagh said.

"There is an enormous amount of political video material on YouTube, mostly relating to American politics; however, it all appears to have originally been designed for broadcast on television. It's advertising, or just snippets of television programming. There are a couple of American politicians, already elected, who have used YouTube to publish video campaign material on their websites. I don't believe any other politicians or candidates have done this in Australia yet."

"I haven't made any attempt to show-off video-making expertise, because it will be plain to everyone that I don't have any. But I should say that the videos cost the Democratic Labor Party nothing to make, and nothing to publish. That is, in itself, an interesting thing to think about."

"Major political parties in Victoria will be spending many millions of dollars on carefully crafted messages. The rest of us will just have to use our imaginations and the free media. For smaller parties, this technology provides opportunities. For major parties this technology presents dangers - their candidates will come under pressure to speak for themselves. This is precisely what the spin doctors employed by major parties do not want."

“This DLP initiative is the first small step in a process with the potential to revolutionise election campaigns throughout Australia,” Mr Kavanagh claimed.

3AW talkback

Got onto 3AW as a caller to talk back radio. Began slowly but did much better as the panellists began to attack me and the DLP on extremely spurious grounds. As usual, their arguments were mostly in the form of ridicule and manifestations of prejudices rather than anything reasoned. One of the panellists disagreed with me that the DLP had not had a very fair go from the Australian media. When I asked if he had ever interviewed anyone in his career as a journalist he acknowledged that he had not and became noticeably less hostile. Was on for a total of perhaps ten minutes. Managed to get the name of the website out over the air. The panellists suggested that the DLP had never achieved anything! When I countered that the DLP as one example, was responsible for introducing equity into educational funding they tried to disagree. I retorted very firmly that it was a matter of historical fact that it was the DLP which had achieved ‘State Aid’ and the commentators acquiesced. At the conclusion thee panellists asked me to spell my name and commented, "Peter Kavanagh …well remember that name folks, you might be hearing it again in the future".

Peter Kavanagh

ABC Western Victoria

Peter Kavanagh says he believes in affordable home ownership, dam building and lowering the abortion rate, and these viewpoints can be articulated from any location.

ABC Western Victoria local news story 19 December 2005