Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Recent media reports saw our Prime Minister confirm that it made sense to him to relocate the SBS from its home of 30 years in Artarmon to an unidentified location in Western Sydney. These reports disappointed many people in my seat of North Sydney. While the Labor Party had announced, during the election campaign, that they would undertake a feasibility study into this move if elected, the coverage seemed to indicate that the relocation was a foregone conclusion.

I took heart from the fact that, as our new PM assumed his role, one of his first commitments was to do politics differently. At the time, I took that to mean that decisions like this would be made fairly and transparently and would include an open process of consultation. If that opportunity was to be realised, then surely, following a transparent and open feasibility study, the ultimate decision to relocate would rightly rest with the SBS board and management.

The SBS provides an invaluable and high-quality service for all Australians, and, in the absence of a compelling business case, it makes no sense to relocate this service just for the sake of it. Having recently toured the SBS studios, I was able to see firsthand the state-of-the-art facilities they have created for themselves in a building that they own and are happily occupying.

Meanwhile, in the community that surrounds them, 50 per cent of people living in the North Sydney electorate were born overseas and 30 per cent of us speak a language other than English at home. We are a vibrant and diverse community. And the SBS is an important local employer.

On the basis, then, that the existing facilities already meet their needs, and the community that surrounds them is representative of the multicultural nation, surely the millions of dollars that would be required to unnecessarily relocate them would be better invested in the production of local content—something that the SBS and many other companies and broadcasters and communities are calling for.

I was lucky. I grew up in an era where Australian content quotas were mandated across all broadcasters. My favourite programs were made here in Australia. The characters looked like people I knew and the places felt like home. These days, with the absence of these quotas, it's not unusual to now see young children mimicking an American drawl when they role-play, and I find this heartbreaking.

Ultimately, our North Sydney community will need to pull together to keep the SBS in Artarmon, and I look forward to working with our local mayors and state members to make a strong case for it to remain exactly where it is and for the federal funding to be used more appropriately for the benefit of all Australians and the broadcaster itself. Our priority should be local content production, not needless bricks-and-mortar projects.