New opportunities for culturally driven broadcasting

I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which
we meet today –  the Gadigal people of the Eora nation – and pay my
respects to their elders both past and present. I would also like to
wish everyone prosperity and best wishes for the Lunar New Year.

This
is one of my last addresses as Managing Director of SBS so forgive me
if in touching on the challenges and opportunities for SBS today I also
permit myself a little retrospective overview of my tenure.

When I
retire in July I will have been at SBS for more than eight years — with
five of those as Managing Director; the preceding years spent as Head
of Television. It has been a period of immense change for both SBS and
the broadcasting industry.

This year for me will also bring to a
close a full-time career of 45 years in the media industry, the last 41
of which have been spent in public broadcasting at the ABC, NZBC and
TVNZ in New Zealand, the BBC in the UK, and now SBS.

Only my
bank manager regrets the choice I made between public and commercial
broadcasting. From my very first day at the ABC in 1970, as a young
print journalist discovering the power of broadcasting, through to my
current position at the helm of arguably the most imaginative,
innovative and inspiring manifestation of public broadcasting, I have
been privileged to be part of the evolution of this wonderful
institution.

When I started, state of the art news coverage was
black and white film of the Vietnam War air-freighted to Australia and
broadcast four days after it had been shot. I might then have imagined
that I would witness the birth of far more potent and immediate tools,
video tape and satellite, but I wouldn’t have considered the possibility
that I would be around at their demise, victims of a digital explosion!
I might have been persuaded that the future held greater choice for
audiences but not that that the choice would be unlimited and freed of
the tyranny of sequential delivery.

But then, that has been the
great delight of my time in this industry. Constant change, constant
improvement — some of it predictable and evolutionary, much of it
shocking and revolutionary.

When I arrived at SBS in my very
first public speech I chose my words carefully in stating that I had no
intention of being a passive custodian of the service. Partly I was
indicating a personal preference for my style of leadership but really I
was simply stating that public broadcasting everywhere cannot meet its
obligations, possibly cannot even survive, unless it surrenders an
over-reverence of the past in favour of an active and sustained journey
of change.

My lack of passivity is probably the one thing my
critics and supporters would agree on. I’ll take that as a win.

But
I acknowledge that not everyone has agreed with my agenda and many of
the outcomes that I regard as successes some others portray as a form of
betrayal, an abandonment of the principals of a glorious past.

So
be it. For the record….

I am proud that we broadcast Top Gear
after every other network had rejected it, that it made us a bit of
money to invest in other programming

I am proud that we found a
way to lift our commercial performance and used those dollars to fund
expanded news and current affairs, commission more Australian programs,
launch SBS Two and build a vital and successful Online platform.

I
am proud that we stole the rights to the Ashes from under the noses of
every other deep-pocketed but ultimately timid network, that we locked
up the rights to the FIFA World Cup and the Tour de France to ensure
they are available in full to all Australians.

I am proud that we
now own two subscription channels broadening our services particularly
in the field of film and art.

I am proud that the scale, quality
and courage of our Australian story telling has eclipsed anything we’d
previously attempted. Remote Area Nurse, The Circuit, East West 101,
First Australians and, most recently, Immigration Nation tell stories
that no other network dares. That’s our job.

And when at last
year’s Logie Awards we had more winning programmes than the ABC and
Channel Nine combined then…you guessed it…I’m proud!

Although
many of those successes are assisted by our commercial performance the
inspiration for them is to be found both in our Charter and in the
underpinning principals of public broadcasting generally.

Public
broadcasters are staunchly independent, providing much needed diversity
of views, particularly in news and current affairs. We are tasked with
making content that helps reflect and define who we are as a nation. We
are a source of information and comfort — particularly during times of
need — and we have experienced more than our fair share in recent
months.

We are at our best on the edge — breaking ground without
fear of failure because — unlike our commercial counterparts — we can
often indulge in a broader definition of success.

Public
broadcasters are also mirrors on which you can see reflections of the
community we serve. SBS, more so than any broadcaster in Australia, is
committed to ensuring that reflection is an authentic one — featuring
the real faces of Australia’s diverse society.

And SBS does all
of this in 68 languages across three major platforms as well as on
subscription television. It is no mean feat.

You’ll have gathered
from my earlier comments that my real passion is quality local content.
In general that reflects my journalistic background — a desire to tell
stories of relevance and importance to our society. In the particular
context of SBS it speaks to a determination that Australia’s
multicultural society cannot be properly reflected by simply importing
and subtitling overseas content. In the year I arrived at SBS we spent
about five million dollars commissioning Australian stories from the
independent production sector, these days we spend five to six times
that. But even that is still a fraction of what we should be investing
in this critical area.

Regardless of who succeeds me, I sincerely
hope they see the value in SBS continuing to strive to create programs
and content which explore issues of cultural diversity in a way that
captures the interest and imagination of as many Australians as
possible.

I am not afraid to make the call that SBS is in better
shape than when I arrived — we have larger audiences, better content, a
more efficiently run organisation and more resources (although still not
nearly enough).

The credit for this can be laid squarely at the
feet of the many difficult and sometimes unpopular decisions that have
been made in recent years by myself, SBS management and the SBS Board.

We
are duty bound to ensure that SBS is well placed to meet the continuing
challenges of the digital environment and to stake its place in the
Australian broadcast landscape in the future. Decisions about long term
sustainability are not always compatible with short term popularity.

There
can be no better reminder of the important contribution SBS has made
over the last three decades than our anniversary celebrations held last
year. It was an opportunity to remind our supporters, our audience and
our stakeholders of the importance of SBS.

I made a comment
earlier about public broadcasting sometimes being overly reverential
about the past at the expense of a commitment to a new future. You’ll
have seen from that reel that I certainly don’t subscribe to a view that
our past is irrelevant. Quite the reverse. While our past, in our case a
justifiably proud heritage of success against all odds, cannot
necessarily supply the answers to our future challenges it does inspire
us to meet them with confidence and passion. Those early pioneers of
SBS, in radio and television, created a unique SBS spirit — unshakeable
belief in our purpose and dogged resolve to achieve our goals.

That
spirit which created the services and iconic moments of our broadcast
history is the same spirit that has carried us to our most recent
achievements, and the same spirit we must call on in meeting the new
challenges facing SBS.

In our recently updated Corporate Plan,
SBS — for the first time — explicitly states that one of our core
objectives is to contribute to social cohesion. That has always been
implicit in our purpose and has been an integral part of the spirit of
SBS that I’ve just referred to. But elevating it to a stated goal
obliges you to look afresh at your output and activities to ensure not
only that they are aligned with that purpose but they are being fully
leveraged for maximum impact.

To help achieve that, we seek to be
a catalyst for the national conversation about multiculturalism and
social inclusion.

We have long been the home of content that
explores themes around these issues, but more than that, we want to
inform the debate, to provoke it and to guide it. It is an area where we
have been lacking and that is a criticism I am willing to accept and
have taken steps to remedy.

This took the form recently with the
broadcast of our landmark documentary series — Immigration Nation: The
Secret History of Us. A three-part documentary series made in
partnership with Renegade Films, Immigration Nation tells the story of
how modern, multicultural Australia was built against the odds.

It
continued the tradition of SBS being home to compelling documentary
series like its predecessor First Australians – that inform and educate
audiences about our past while also having a profound impact on our
future.

But SBS is not merely content to broadcast programming
that starts a debate about issues of importance to the nation — we want
to be the catalyst for a more informed conversation about who we are and
where we have come from.

To this end, to coincide with the
broadcast of Immigration Nation, SBS also
commissioned research into
Australian attitudes towards immigration and our understanding of
Australia’s immigration history.

Apart from providing a
historical perspective on attitudes towards immigration, the research
also gives us a deeper understanding of the range and complexity of
contemporary attitudes towards immigration and cultural diversity and
the perspectives and experiences of Australians from diverse migrant
backgrounds.

The research was explored in a partnership with The
Australian newspaper in the lead-up to the broadcast of Immigration
Nation and we are publicly releasing the findings from research firm
Ipsos Mackay today.

The overwhelming sentiment from the research
is that Australians accept multiculturalism – albeit often grudgingly.
The historic comparison shows that attitudes towards migration over the
last 30 years are largely unchanged despite the worst fears about
migrants never coming to fruition.

Broadly there is support for
diversity in Australia with more than 60 per cent of respondents
agreeing that Australia should be multicultural and acknowledging that
immigration has enriched the Australian way of life. But disturbingly,
the majority of respondents believe that racial prejudice had increased
in the last five years.

There is a broad lack of awareness about
Australia’s immigration history with eight out of ten respondents
believing Australia has always been generous to immigrants and more than
half believing we have taken more than our fair share of immigrants and
refugees compared to other nations.

37 per cent believe
Australia has always been a world leader in racial equality and 34 per
cent believe we don’t have a responsibility to accept refugees.

Some
recurring themes in the Australian community over the last 30 years
include:
•    We worry about enclaves, ethnic tension and violence as
well as the pressure on resources.
•    We feel assimilation is
crucial and language is the key; and
•    we are most concerned about
recent arrivals and shift that concern to new communities.
•  
 However we recognise the importance of attracting skilled migrants and
appreciate what immigration has done for our food culture.

One
worrying trend in the last ten years has been the gradual but obvious
demise in sympathy for asylum seekers. As support for skilled migrants
has risen, the suspicion of ‘boat people’ has also risen.

In the
1980s and early 1990s it was common for people to support legitimate
refugees, yet be opposed to migrants who would come here to take ‘Aussie
jobs’.

While the same themes arise over the 30 years, it is not
an entirely bleak picture. Resistance to particular ethnic groups
clearly and quickly breaks down over time, often within a generation or
two.

Yesterday’s immigrant troublemaker and ethnic ghetto becomes
tomorrow’s model, well assimilated citizen living in a gastro-tourist
destination. The worry is this pattern won’t continue into the future —
which is where SBS’s continued contribution in both the
media and
multicultural landscape is critical.

The political shifts that
played out in Australia in the 1970s had a profound impact on the
make-up of modern Australia and were explored in Immigration Nation.

Labor
Party policy fundamentally shifted under Gough Whitlam but it was
Malcolm Fraser who put an end to the White Australia policy and welcomed
Indo-Chinese refugees following the Vietnam War.

Had the matter
been polled or focus group tested the decision would never have been
taken.

It was a brave bureaucratic move by Fraser and one that
many would doubt could occur in modern politics. It changed the face of
this country forever and had a far reaching and positive cultural
impact.

That understanding of our immigration history and
awareness of prevailing public opinion are critical components of our
contribution to building social cohesion.

My personal view is
that both history and current popular opinion demonstrate that without
clear and strong political support, leadership that challenges opinions
born of ignorance, multiculturalism and with it social cohesion remain
at best unfinished business and at worst worryingly at risk.

There
are disturbing signs in Europe. The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel,
in October declared that Germany’s attempt to create a multicultural
society has “utterly failed”. The British Prime Minister, David Cameron,
last week criticised “state multiculturalism” and argued for a stronger
British national identity. This weekend French President Nicolas
Sarkozy joined in the chorus, declaring French multiculturalism a
failure.

We should be careful not to generalise. All three
examples have differences in intent and context — except for one thing.
All three leaders are observing growing popular support for extreme
right wing parties with strong anti-immigration agendas.

It is
important to be clear about the difference between their circumstance
and ours. None of those three European nations have been created by
immigration in the way that Australia has. The head of the French
Council of Black Associations, Patrick Lozes could have been speaking of
Australia when he put it so succinctly: “The diversity of French
society cannot be a failure because this diversity is France itself.”

But
what of here? I know some community leaders were greatly concerned at
the way in which immigration was debated in the last election. Public
concern expressed over boat people seemed to be unfairly and
irrationally extended to an implicit criticism of immigration levels
generally. With immigration being portrayed negatively there seemed no
appetite among politicians to support publicly the benefits of
multiculturalism. The tainting of this entire debate by the issue of
boat people caused and is causing great unease among communities.

Of
course it is not SBS’s role to take a partisan position. But it is our
role, and one more clearly identified than ever before, to be the
catalyst for debate based on knowledge and understanding instead of
ignorance and prejudice.

Later this year SBS will continue to
challenge Australian assumptions and attitudes about refugees when we
screen an ambitious constructed documentary series called ‘Go Back To
Where You Came From’.

A three hour series set to screen in
Refugee Week in June, six Australians, with different preconceptions,
will live as refugees for one month and trace, in reverse, the journey
real refugees took to reach Australia.

Participants will join
refugee families in their everyday lives in Australia experiencing their
social, cultural and religious activities. They will then head for Asia
by boat and finally travel to refugee camps in the countries of origin
of their refugee hosts and assist UNHCR workers.

Along the route
the participants will debate, argue and perhaps change some
of their
opinions. Not one is likely to be untouched by their experience and
along the way we are likely to cause quite the controversy.

Like
Immigration Nation, we hope to expand the discourse about ‘boat people’
in this country and will build partnerships with the UNHCR and others to
take the conversation beyond the television screen in June this year.

Thought-provoking,
provocative and innovative television is a hallmark of SBS and long may
it continue.

Finally let me tell you about a project that will
re-define the way in which SBS provides services to individual language
groups. Currently that service, to 68 language communities, is
concentrated on radio where it all began 35 years ago. It’s an audio
service further constrained by the sequential nature of radio scheduling
— some languages wait all week for their one hour of broadcast, the
most hours even the biggest communities receive is two hours a day.

It’s
simply not good enough and in a digital on-line world it is possible to
cast such constraints aside and deliver to those and other communities
expanded services consistent with their needs.

Last week SBS
officially launched its Chinese Language Virtual Community Centre — the
VCC. A pilot project, the VCC takes SBS’s language services into the
21st century.
An online destination for all of SBS’s Cantonese and
Mandarin content, the VCC features entertainment, film, news, views and
social networking for Chinese Australians.

It abandons the
traditional lines between television, radio and online content and has
become the benchmark for SBS’s services in the future. The VCC has
already been embraced by the Australian Chinese community with almost
20,000 unique browsers attracted by our pre-launch testing.

As
part of our commitment to meeting the language needs of the Australian
community, SBS also launched its first ever in-language television news
service — Mandarin News Australia — screening on both SBS One and SBS
TWO and on-demand on the VCC.

This ground breaking news services
marries our news, current affairs and language expertise to deliver an
exciting new magazine program for one of the country’s largest language
communities — subtitled in English so all Australians can access it.
These
new services are an exciting part of SBS’s future. The VCC is the
modern interpretation of our original purpose and we hope to deliver
these services to more communities subject, as ever, to additional
funding.

So what else does the future hold for SBS? As always
our ambitions will only ever be limited by our resources. SBS THREE and
SBS FOUR, more subscription channels to join STVDIO and World Movies,
more Australian content, VCCs for all of Australia’s large and high
needs language groups — all of it online, on-demand and on mobiles and
smart devices.

I regret that I won’t be part of what can be
achieved by an adequately or even well-resourced SBS.

But I will
enjoy watching, listening and observing the amazing services that would
be a result of that outcome should any Government realise the potential
of that investment. Thank you.