Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to support this motion, and I commend the member for Fremantle for moving it. As stated in the motion, the ABC's charter requires the broadcaster to 'contribute to a sense of national identity and inform and entertain, and reflect the cultural diversity of, the Australian community'. The Newspoll conducted to determine community attitudes towards the ABC in June 2013 indicated that 82 per cent of respondents believed that the ABC did a good job at being distinctively Australian. Seventy-eight per cent of respondents thought the ABC did a good job at being balanced and even-handed. When asked whether people thought the ABC was valuable to the Australian community, 85 per cent responded in the affirmative. The Labor Party agrees and extends this to the SBS.

It is therefore disheartening that some people in this place—and some in the community, indeed—are so out of step with this sentiment on this important issue. The ABC and the SBS have rightly earned their reputations for rigorous, trustworthy journalism. When news breaks, the Australian people have turned to the ABC. When there is an emergency service announcement, the Australian people have turned to the ABC. When new citizens who spoke little English wanted to find out about a historic Labor initiative called Medicare, they turned to the SBS. Since 1932, the ABC has served Australia. Since 1975, the SBS has done the same. They have each, therefore, earned the respect of the Australian people, and they deserve this parliament's respect and the support of government to continue their paths of innovation, comprehensive broadcasting and fulfilling their roles in Australian society.

As the shadow minister for citizenship and multiculturalism, I am particularly concerned with promoting the important role the SBS plays in building an inclusive and harmonious community through the broadcasting of non-English-language and multicultural programming. Its very existence is a reflection of Australia's multicultural society. Australians are entitled to free-to-air entertainment and news irrespective of their ethnicity, and in many cases the SBS's programming is focused on educating all Australians about our role in the world and the diversity of peoples that our nation comprises.

I want to take this opportunity to mention but one instance of many which highlight the wide-ranging scope and needs of the various communities who rely on the SBS. In late 2012, it became apparent following a census of community languages that the number of Maltese radio programs would be reduced. One can understand the SBS needing to perform this task when newer languages arise and, informed by the census, some older languages may become smaller as a proportion of the population as a result. As a result of that, the SBS needs to have its programming reflect those changes. My electorate of Greenway and many surrounding parts of Western Sydney are home to a very large Maltese community. Many elderly Maltese residents rely on those services. So it was with great concern that I was approached by many members of the Maltese community early last year to make me aware that the SBS, after undertaking its first major review of the SBS analog radio schedule in more than 18 years—so you can understand why it needed to undertake it—found that, according to the notification given by Peter Khalil, the director of corporate affairs:

… it was necessary to rebalance the allocation of in-language broadcast hours for different language communities in order to bring them into line with the demography of today's Australia …Under the new schedule, the Maltese language program was allocated two broadcast hours per week on the analogue schedule.

However, following consultation with the Maltese community and representations by me, I am pleased to say that it was announced, effective from 29 April last year, that the SBS would allocate additional broadcast time to the Maltese-language program on its new digital radio schedule, to be reviewed after two years.

The reason I raise this is that this was really business that the SBS needed to conduct and where it needed to reflect the community, done within the parameters of an existing budget, not within the context of a commission of audit. So, if this is the kind of dilemma that the SBS finds itself in, in serving many different community needs and also, to its credit, being innovative, I think we can imagine what would happen in the scope of a commission of audit.

I conclude by urging this government to respect the mandate of our public broadcasters to provide comprehensive broadcasting services and to enable them to be financed in order that they might continue to perform this very important role.

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