SBS more relevant than ever

The Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, has just released a discussion paper on the future of national public broadcasting (ABC and SBS: Towards a Digital Future, October 2008).

One of the key questions raised in the paper is whether the charters of the ABC and SBS should be amended to ensure that they provide a contemporary and relevant guide for these two organisations in the coming decades. So this is the right time to articulate the ongoing significance for Australia not only of the ABC (which is too much the exclusive focus of debate around public broadcasting in this country), but of SBS.

Too often SBS is dismissed as a niche broadcaster, relevant only for ethnics, eggheads and, more recently, revheads. Last year’s controversy about the departure of newsreader Mary Kostakidis and the introduction of ads within SBS TV programs didn’t help. The fact that “multiculturalism” is no longer flavour of the month has also been reason to question the ongoing importance of SBS.

Last year Sydney Morning Herald columnist Paul Sheehan even argued that SBS is “an indulgence we don’t need” because it has outlived its charter; “Australia has moved on. The term ‘ethnic’ is now laughably outdated.”

Sheehan’s short-sightedness is disturbing. As we argue in our book The SBS Story: The Challenge of Cultural Diversity (UNSW Press, 2008), SBS should be recognised as one of Australia’s most important cultural institutions. Importantly, its brief to “reflect Australia’s multicultural society” is more urgent than ever.

In this sense, the SBS charter does not need amending: instead, we need a serious engagement with what that charter means today and how it should be translated into contemporary practice. To appreciate this we need a much more expansive concept of multicultural broadcasting than is generally assumed.

What SBS must champion is a multiculturalism for the 21st century, not that of the 1980s. This is a multiculturalism that shows that all Australians - not just recent migrants of non-English speaking backgrounds - have a stake in the multicultural and multilingual society that Australia has become. Unlike what critics say, this modern multiculturalism does not promote segregation and separatism but, on the contrary, fosters social cohesion, integration and innovation.

Without many of us realising it, cultural diversity has become a mainstream issue. After decades of large-scale immigration Australia’s cultural diversity is now evident in all corners of society, but especially among younger generations. One only has to watch the playgrounds of schools around the country to get this message.

More than one quarter of Australians today were born overseas, and migrants now come from a vastly more diverse range of countries than ever before, especially from non-European countries. Almost 200 languages are spoken in Australian homes. If Australia is to remain a harmonious society where hostile intercultural conflict is rare, we need social and institutional arrangements that promote not just social inclusion, but also a wholehearted recognition of diversity as an intrinsic feature of Australian national identity.

In the interconnected, globalised world of the 21st century, a cosmopolitan attitude that is unafraid of unfamiliar and foreign others, is more critical than ever. This is what a national multicultural broadcaster can help nurture and advance.

Our book shows that SBS has already made an enormous contribution to this agenda over the past 30 years. This multicultural broadcaster was never just a welfare service for disadvantaged ethnics. In the mid-1990s then Managing Director Malcolm Long took his inspiration from Robert Hughes’ notable book The Culture of Complaint to declare that SBS’s role was to help Australians navigate difference. “In the world that is coming”, Hughes wrote, “if you can’t navigate difference, you’ve had it”.

That world has arrived and here lies the significance of a national broadcaster that sends out radio programs in 68 languages, familiarises Australian audiences with other cultures and languages through subtitled films, and provides a world news service that does not succumb to the parochialism that is so characteristic of news on the commercial channels and even the ABC.

In the past few years SBS has been seen to be straying from its multicultural and multilingual charter and becoming increasingly commercialised. Indeed, one wonders why it was necessary to produce an Australian version of Top Gear, no doubt a ratings and advertising dollar winner but with zero relevance to the charter.

However, in the same period SBS has also stepped up its efforts to offer us uniquely Australian productions such as the current documentary series First Australians, the first time ever this country’s history has been told on television from a point of view that validates the Aboriginal perspective. This type of programming is of the essence not just for Aborigines, but for all Australians.

For this kind of programming to have maximum integrative impact it has to be delivered by a universally available, free-to-air national broadcaster. This is where the role of SBS as the national broadcaster with a special multicultural brief is so important. It is also internationally unique and the envy of many countries around the world. SBS regularly receives overseas delegations who wish to learn from this exceptional Australian media organisation. How did it do it?

Crucially, its multicultural charter has also pushed SBS to be a cradle for creativity and innovation. The charter has forced SBS to search for new talent, new stories, new ways of media making. An example was last year’s crime series East West 101, the first ever TV series made in the Western world that features a Muslim detective as a well-rounded, not stereotyped protagonist. So innovative was this series, that it has been sold to both Israel and several Arab countries.

What SBS needs is a strengthening of its vision with which to realise its charter in the coming decades, and the necessary resources to do so. As long as other media organizations in Australia remain unable or unwilling to treat cultural diversity as intrinsic to Australian society, not an exotic add-on or problem, then we need SBS to help us secure Australia’s future as an open and outward looking nation.