Since their inception in the early 1960s, Australian content requirements for commercial television have been subjected to considerable scrutiny through a series of formal inquiries. Over the last ten years this process has intensified. In recent years there have been a number of academic criticisms regarding the state of debate about the regulation of Australian content on commercial television and the capacity of the debate to generate genuine criticism and embrace change. This thesis examines the dynamics of debate about Australian content. It focuses on the ABT's Inquiry into Australian Content on Commercial Television (ACI) which ran from 1983 to 1989. It takes as its basic point of reference Jurgen Habermas' concept of the 'public sphere'. This concept refers to a realm of social life, separate from the state and private spheres, in which 'public opinion' can be formed. Habermas has argued that, with the refeudalisation of the public sphere, the state and private interests have increasingly collaborated to close off the public sphere. The thesis concludes that in many respects Habermas' concept of a refeudalised 'public sphere' is a useful explanatory tool for understanding the dynamics of the ACI and the limited degree of criticism generated by it. However, Habermas' model is limited in so far as it fails to accord adequate recognition to the complexities and significance of the mediation of the 'public interest' by key participants in the inquiry and the strategic role of rhetoric for these participants. Habermas concludes that with the refeudalisation of the public sphere and the disappearance of the historical conditions which supported its operation, the public sphere must now be reconstructed on a case by case basis. Attempts to achieve this, have tended to focus on the facilitation of citizen participation in public policy debate. However, as this analysis of the ACI demonstrates, the dynamics of the debate itself appear to limit I the degree to which 'public opinion' can be elevated above 'private interest'. This thesis demonstrates that the mediation of the 'public interest' assumed a central role in the rhetoric and strategy of the ACI. Each of the key players represented distinct interests and were largely unaccountable to the 'public' they claimed to serve. This thesis concludes that in order to gain a more detailed understanding of how communication works in such a context, and in order to conceive of alternative participatory forms, we need to focus on those aspects of public discourse which Habermas neglects: the rhetoric and the strategic nature of public representation. It suggests that fruitful avenues for further study may lie with Bantz's notion of communicative structures or Luhmann's systems approach to communication.