Address at the opening of the National Ethnic and Multicultural Broadcasters' Council (NEMBC) Conference 2023

Good morning.

Acknowledgement of country

I acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands on which we meet.

I pay respect to all First Nations Elders, past and present, and to First Nations people here with us today.

This year is the year of the Voice – and I am so proud to be a member of a government committed to the Uluru Statement from the Heart - in full.

As my esteemed colleague, the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs Andrew Giles said about our nation on Harmony Day this year, “We’ve grown and we're increasingly not afraid of having difficult conversations about our past, present and future, of questioning our ways and acknowledging our mistakes, and finding new ways to live better, in harmony.”

In decades to come, let us look back at the historical significance of 2023 - a year we moved a step further down the long road towards reconciliation by saying “yes” to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

Introduction



Indeed, it gives me great pleasure to be here at the opening of the National Ethnic and Multicultural Broadcasters’ Council Conference 2023, to support the very people giving a broadcast voice to multicultural Australia. It is an honour to be among the cream of the community broadcasting sector.

While this is my first opportunity to join you as Minister, if memory serves me correctly, this is my second address to your conference.  My first was as Shadow Minister for Citizenship and Multiculturalism, in Darwin – and I do remember a great dinner, lots of laughs and dancing. Everyone was hospitable and it is a pleasure to return.

This forum really combines my policy passions: Communications and multiculturalism. I’m sorry I can’t stay for the day, however I have a commitment in Blacktown which is, incidentally, to celebrate multiculturalism, so I trust you’ll excuse me.

Australia is, and proudly so, one of the most diverse and successful multicultural societies in the world.

In 2023, more than 50 per cent of all Australians were born overseas, or have a parent who was.

While Australians are united by our values - of respect, freedom, fairness and equality of opportunity - many Australians, including some of us in this room, may differ in first languages, religion, or birth country.

I am particularly proud to be the first Australian Cabinet Minister of Fijian Heritage.

Multiculturalism is our strength, and community broadcasters nourish and amplify this strength.

Today, ethnic community broadcasting includes:

• 2,118 hours of broadcasting per week,
• 122 languages,
• 125 cultural groups,
• 80 stations,
• 79 regional & rural stations, and
• 52 metropolitan stations.

As there always is, and particularly in relation to Stan Grant this week, there has been a lot of discourse about diversity, and there is much to unpack. But what I want to emphasise is that community broadcasting, particularly ethnic and multicultural community broadcasting, are carrying the load when it comes to diverse representations in the media.

Today’s conference is so important because it brings together two vital components of our media sector – multicultural media and community broadcasting.

Community Broadcasting

The Albanese Government is committed to supporting a diverse and sustainable media sector so that all Australian stories are told and heard.

Including community-centric stories that don’t make the headlines, and local music that isn’t on the charts – yet.

As people in this room know well, community broadcasting services operate at the heart of local communities.

Staff and volunteers work to deliver local news, tell local stories, and provide a platform for diverse voices and music that is essential to a well-informed and inclusive society. 

My first visit as the Minister for Communications last year was to Braidwood FM – or Braidwood Community Radio – to visit the station and acknowledge their achievements.

I felt it to be a significant first Ministerial visit because community radio utilises one of the oldest mediums in the Communications Portfolio, yet remains so vital to modern life across the country.

Community radio contributes significantly to the key broadcasting objectives of localism and diversity, and its freely accessible to Australians of all walks of life.

But not only that, Braidwood FM, like many community broadcasters, exists not just as a broadcaster – but as a lifeline, too.

During the catastrophic Black Summer Fires, Gordon Waters and his team at Braidwood FM were the sole source of local, on the ground, emergency coverage while fires swept through the South East Coast region of NSW. 

As fires threatened the town, Braidwood FM told locals which roads were dangerous to drive on, exactly which areas of suburbs were advised to evacuate by the RFS, and where they could find safety near them.

This tailored broadcasting, where audiences can listen to localised information, cannot be underestimated.

The Albanese Government recognises this, and in less than a year we have:

• Provided an additional $4 million per year of ongoing funding for the Community Broadcasting Program from 2023-24, as part of the October Budget;
  
   
• Commenced a review into the sustainability of the sector; and
  
   
• Passed legislative amendments through Parliament, to provide greater regulatory clarity and certainty for the sector, and quality programming for audiences. 

That’s right: My first visit as Minister was to a community broadcasting station, my first Budget as Minister included funding for community broadcasting, and the first bill that I introduced as Minister – which passed the Parliament last December, was for community radio.

I’d like to take this moment to reflect on the Parliamentary debate on the bill, the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Community Radio) Bill 2022. It was a unifying exercise and there is bipartisan support, right across the Parliament. Members from across the country and of a range of political persuasions spoke with warmth of their support for the sector.

In terms of the Community Radio Sustainability Review, this is now well underway and is being undertaken in two parts.

Firstly, the Social Research Centre undertook a survey of community broadcasters, on behalf of the Department, as part of an evaluation of the Community Broadcasting Program.

The findings from this evaluation will inform the second part, which is further consultation on a review of the sustainability of the community broadcasting sector.

I thank NEMBC for participating in the evaluation, and I look forward to the outcomes of the review – which will assist the Government in supporting the sector as well as the contribution of multicultural media to media diversity.

The Albanese Government is committed to working with the sector to continue to empower our community broadcasters.

Newsprint  



We are also actively strengthening our multicultural media sector in Australia.

During the peak of the pandemic in 2021, media that catered to our culturally and linguistically diverse Australians were imperative to supporting the safety of our community at large, including in my electorate of Greenway in Western Sydney.

The Blacktown LGA where Greenway sits is home to around 400,000 people representing around 188 birthplaces and 182 different languages. My community experienced some of the most restrictive lockdowns in NSW, and went on to achieve high rates of vaccination.

When we needed to receive messages about COVID vaccinations, testing centres, symptoms and new restrictions, our multicultural media stepped up, sharing information in language so that all constituents had the accurate information they needed to stay safe.

In the 2022 Budget, we provided $15 million to local and regional newspaper publishers to help absorb newsprint price hikes, including $5 million for eligible local newspaper publishers, like First Nations and multicultural newspaper publishers.

We wasted no time getting the funding out the door and the outcomes of the funding have long been announced and available on Grant Connect.

Here I would like to note a couple of key points, for the record:

During the Federal election campaign, last year, Labor called for support for news publishers in the fact of the newsprint crisis, and offered bipartisan support to craft a support package. The Coalition declined this offer and went on to announce a fund for regional news publishers.

Labor matched that but bettered it, with additional funding for independent suburban as well as multicultural news publishers.

Too often, the multicultural media sector has been overlooked, despite how important it is for media diversity and access to trusted information in Australia.

I am pleased to have ended that oversight.

FECCA Funding

During the pandemic we also saw mis and disinformation emerge like never before, which was referred to as an “infodemic” by the World Health Organisation.

And in a media landscape where English is your second language, it is even more challenging to know which information is reliable.

That’s why, in the 2023-24 Budget, presented only two weeks ago, we dedicated $2.5 million to my Department, to partner with the Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Council of Australia (FECCA) to support media literacy in culturally and linguistically diverse communities.

This measure recognises the need and role for trusted voices to convey information to multicultural communities, and it will build the capacity of the community as well as the Government when it comes to combating harmful information.

The Department and FECCA will develop this partnership and I look forward to having more to say about it in due course.

To that end, it was my pleasure to meet with the Chair, Deputy Chair, CEO and colleagues of FECCA recently, to discuss the commitment and the needs of multicultural communities.

Multicultural media is, of course, an essential part of trusted media ecosystem, and is essential for conveying messages, including Government and health messages to communities.

There is a role for Government in addressing the trusted information ecosystem – both by supporting the sustainability of the media sector but also by combatting misinformation and disinformation which poses a threat to the safety and wellbeing of Australians, as well as to our democracy, society and economy.

Earlier this year I announced that the Albanese Government will legislate to provide the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) with new powers to hold digital platforms to account and improve efforts to combat harmful misinformation and disinformation in Australia.

This marks a major step forward in addressing the spread of online misinformation and disinformation which has grown rapidly in scale and speed.

The ACMA will be given new information-gathering and record-keeping powers to create transparency around efforts by digital platforms to respond to misinformation and disinformation on their services, while balancing the right to freedom of expression so fundamental to democracy.

The Government intends to undertake public consultation on the powers through the release of an exposure draft Bill in the near future and introduce legislation in Parliament later this year following consultation – and I invite you to contribute to that process to share your insights.

We know that ethnic and multicultural communities can be targeted by misinformation and scammers in different ways, and we need to understand the evolving online threat matrix from a range of perspectives.

Another area of focus for Government is media literacy.

The Australian Government is improving media literacy in schools, with the rollout of the Digital Licence and Media Literacy Lab for Australian school students, but there is more that needs to be done – particularly after a decade of neglect of this issue under the previous Government.

As I said in my recent address to the Australian Media Literacy Summit, I have directed my department to work across Government departments and agencies to align objectives, principles and priority focus areas linked to media literacy.

Media Literacy overlaps with Digital Literacy and Information Literacy – all of which have a distinct focus with complementary skills and competencies.

And of course, media literacy must be lifelong. 

We need to better understand who in our society needs additional support, and what that support will look like – be it for older Australians, people living with a disability and those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, and I very much welcome your views on measures to support media literacy.

News MAP

Indeed, part of supporting a diverse media landscape in Australia is a strong news media sector, where facts come first in news coverage – to keep Australians informed and safe.

We have allocated a total of $5.6 million through the 2022-23 and 2023-24 Budgets to support the initial development of the News Media Assistance Program – known as the ‘News MAP’ – a program of work that will lay the foundations for principled, targeted and evidence-based support for the news media sector.

This will help guide news media policy intervention, and support public interest journalism and media diversity.

For all the reviews and inquiries into the news media sector over the past decade – and there have been many – there is no principled, evidence-based framework to guide government intervention and assistance for the news media sector.

Out of this funding, the Government has announced $900,000 for the Public Interest Journalism Initiative (PIJI). The funding will support PIJI to continue collecting, analysing and maintaining Australian public interest news and journalism data.

The Government has also set aside up to $1.5 million in funding for the Local and Independent News Association (LINA).  This will underpin LINA’s important work supporting digital, hyper-local and independent news publishers.

The News MAP will be released for public consultation in coming weeks, and I look forward to your contributions.

A diversity of voices is an enduring objective of media policy, and one that multicultural media contributes to in a range of ways. You provide service diversity, production diversity – both in terms of on-air talent and behind the scenes – as well as content and program diversity.

Multicultural media shares diverse perspectives and Australia is the richer for it.

Conclusion

As this speech will assure you, the Albanese Government is well aware of the value that both community broadcasting and multicultural media presents for all Australians.

You keep us safe, you keep us entertained and you keep us informed.

In less than a year, I am proud to say that the Albanese Government is delivering on our commitment to ensure the media sector is diverse, sustainable and that it caters to and for all Australians.

Thank you.