Stereotypes down to a problem in the numbers

In a speech to students at the Australian Film, Television and Radio school this month, the Academy Award-winning British director David Puttnam called for film to incorporate more Muslim stories. These kinds of concerns are being treated seriously in Britain, where a report last year by the commission on racial equality condemned British TV for the under-representation of ethnic minorities - particularly Asian and Chinese people.

The study found that in one week the only black or Asian faces in the BBC's top 10 shows, with a combined audience of 33 million, were in the US cartoon The Simpsons.

There is no equivalent study in Australia, but the situation is almost certainly worse. A Queensland University of Technology study in 2003 looked at the proportion of actors playing roles in various television programs around the country. They found about 15 per cent of actors were from non-English-speaking backgrounds, despite the figure being closer to a third in the wider community. Most of their roles were small supporting ones. But this was a significant improvement from a decade previously, where they found it was less than 5 per cent.

There are signs of improvement. The ABC comedy The Librarians has a Muslim female character who is the polar opposite of every stereotype. Channel Seven's Dancing With The Stars has included Anh Do, a comedian of Vietnamese heritage, in its line-up of celebrities. And one of the creators of the new SBS police drama East West 101 has said international networks are showing interest in the series because it contains the first fully formed Arab characters they have seen on Western TV.

But there is still a long way to go.