What's said and seen on screen, on air and in print, shapes cultural and societal norms and challenges biases and perceptions.
Speech to Media Diversity Australia's Industry Round Table
Channel Nine,Sydney - 20 September, 2024
Thank you to Media Diversity Australia, for the invitation to speak with you today, and particularly to CEO Mariam Veiszadeh. And for Channel 9 for hosting us today.
I was delighted to accept, both as the new guy to the Ministry with responsibility for multicultural affairs, but also because media diversity really matters to the community I represent in south-east Melbourne.
One of the most multicultural places in Australia, and indeed the entire world. People from over 150 countries, speaking over 200 languages, with over 100 faith traditions. Above all else, human diversity is the defining feature of the amazing slice of suburbia I live and work in.
Of course, while the miracle of modern multicultural Australia is relatively new diversity is not new to our land. For thousands of years, our vast continent has been home to people of many cultures and traditions, with First Nations peoples speaking over 250 different languages. I acknowledge the Cammeraygal people, the traditional custodians of this land.
The arrival of the British and Europeans and the eventual dawn of our democratic system of government changed things radically.
Our country continued to change over decades of post WWII migration.
But diversity really exploded from the 1970s as the last vestiges of the racist White Australia Policy were abolished and the Racial Discrimination Act was introduced, 50 years ago next year, by the Whitlam Labor Government.
Migration from Asian nations, in particular, has grown rapidly. Over 1.4 million Australians now claim Chinese heritage. The top 3 countries for net overseas migration last year were India, China, and the Philippines.
Leaving aside pandemic peculiarities, India and China have been number 1 and 2 for a decade. Countries in the top 10 for the last 20 years include India, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Iraq, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka. In my community, most people when they shut their front door at night, speak a language other than English.
But there are real concerns that this diversity is not yet adequately reflected in Australia's 'mainstream' media.
Media Diversity Australia research in 2022 showed that despite more than 48% of Australians having a parent born overseas, more than 78% of TV reporters and presenters have an Anglo-Celtic background and only 6% have either an Indigenous or non-European background.
Your presence here today indicates, I hope, that, like me, you think that needs to change.
There are very sound commercial reasons why diversity can be good for business – more eyeballs, more ears, more advertising. Many non-media businesses have cottoned on to the lucrative benefits of growing market share through cultural diversity in their staff and customer base.
But the core reason that I as a politician think this really matters is about social cohesion and power: the media's power to shape our national story, and role in reflecting national identity, perceptions, beliefs, and even influencing the actions of its audiences.
It feels somewhat 'un-Australian' to say that so blatantly, as it's part of our egalitarian national culture to shy away from talking about power.
I try not to be the politician who quotes himself – Mayor Quimby from the Simpsons used to do that and he's no role model! – but to break that rule and quote my First Speech to the Parliament in 2016:
"Our society's institutions of power—our parliaments, judiciary, public services and military—still have a way to go to fully reflect the communities we serve. This includes gender, especially for those opposite, as well as class, ethnicity, disability and sexuality. We make the best decisions when all perspectives are considered—when all voices are heard and at the table."
In my Australian Labor Party, the world's oldest social democratic party, we've made great progress. The Government now comprises 52% women reflecting the population, last week celebrating the 30th anniversary of the start of affirmative action. The last election showed we are making good progress on CALD representation.
It's made us a better government – better decisions, better culture – and it feels like a more normal workplace than the place I briefly passed through in the 1990s as a young staffer before going on to other things.
If we are thinking about power outside the public sector, surely the first stop would be the media, because 'the fourth Estate' is still a very powerful institution.
Those who control how, when and if others are heard hold significant power to include or exclude, and over time to help build or further degrade trust in institutions more broadly.
News organisations tell us what is happening, why it is happening, and sometimes what we should do about it, and influence public opinion in the broadest sense.
Yet we see a continuing trend of people disconnecting from so-called 'mainstream' media to such an extent that it's increasingly questionable in communities like mine whether you are in fact 'mainstream' any more.
The significant decline in people under 30 watching the nightly news on broadcast TV is well documented. But right now, for many Australians, including those I represent, it's broader than just young people.
There are many factors at play in this decline, including the impact of digital platforms and social media, that increase the competition for audience. But the question for this room to consider is the extent to which representations of diversity in the media also play a factor.
Why would many people in my electorate watch the news or many of the programs on TV that don't look and sound like them, don't reflect their lives or share the stories of their neighbours and communities?
Why would they not just leave and get information and create their own realities in other places and spaces? On YouTube, Instagram, foreign media, Telegram, TikTok, and WhatsApp that carry both mainstream news but also unreliable sources or deliberate disinformation.
Society has become ever more atomised: we unblock, unfollow, unfriend, unsubscribe, and create echo chambers.
You might think it odd for a lefty to say this, but I generally decry the intolerance of 'cancel culture' and overuse of 'trigger warnings' in Universities – where otherwise smart young people start screaming and shouting and seemingly lose all capacity for calm and rational debate when they encounter views with which they strongly disagree.
All this has serious implications not just for your business models, but also for social cohesion which is under severe strain. Commonly observed drivers in other democratic societies include: economic pressures and inequality; malign actors; trauma arising from the impact of global conflicts on multiple continents; degrading institutional trust; the digital world – most especially social media; and the incentives for divisive leadership for geopolitical or partisan reasons.
Amidst all this, we are seeing degraded and shrunken common spaces where the Australian public come together, receive the same information, hear diverse views from the broad spread of our population, and focus on what we have in common rather than our differences.
For better or worse, everyone here is an active player in our national discourse, and the way you conduct your affairs and steward your businesses impacts our national story. It can also enhance social cohesion or foment social discord, depending on how this is done.
What's said and seen on screen, on air and in print, shapes cultural and societal norms and challenges biases and perceptions.
A confession in passing to illustrate this in a micro way: last year when I had COVID I binged on Netflix for a couple of days and got sucked down a Bridgerton rabbit hole. For those who haven't watched it – or won't admit to doing so – it has a multiethnic cast, where people of all different ethnic backgrounds play a myriad of characters.
At first, to be honest, it felt a bit weird that both the imperious Queen and the very-good-looking Duke of Hastings in Victorian England were black.
But as the episodes rolled on it became normalised, and you couldn't help but reflect how brilliant this was as a way of challenging powerful stereotypes and normalising diversity.
"Woke" appears to be one of those dreadful filler words, where everyone projects their own meaning but no one means the same thing. Whatever it means, worrying about things like "inclusion" and "belonging" and "diversity" and "trust" are, at times, dismissed as 'woke obsessions'.
However, as someone who's spent the last 2 years on the Intelligence and Security Committee, working with ASIO and the spies, worrying about terrorism, crime and national security, can I assure you inclusion, belonging and diversity are deadly serious matters.
Time doesn't allow me to dwell further on this, so to wrap this point up: social cohesion is not about everyone agreeing. Cohesion is not an end state – it's a process. It works when we work at it. It's about mutual respect, listening to views that are different to our own and accepting that we have more in common than we have differences as Australians, while disagreeing agreeably at times.
And by 'we' working at it, I mean all Australians – individuals and leaders at all levels, but especially our nation's institutions of power.
I'll spare you the detailed laundry list, but the Government is acting on every front. But government is not and can never be enough.
Back in 1998 when now-Senator Pauline Hanson first rose to prominence spewing racist diatribes, some decried all her supporters as 'racist rednecks'.
I'll always remember however the wise words of a mentor and friend of mine, the then Member for Melbourne Lindsay Tanner, who observed most people are actually quite rational and it doesn't help to call everyone racist – most people are not racist.
Actually, if your diet of information was extremely narrow, and all your neighbours and mates were white, then it's not hard to see why a fear of people who are different may have resonated.
There is so much for us as Australians to be proud of and celebrate. But in doing so we should also be taking stock – and the honest truth is that many Australians from culturally diverse backgrounds still do not get the fair go we all deserve and expect. Experiencing racism, discrimination or exclusion from full participation in society.
I'd encourage everyone to reflect more deeply on the feelings and issues that may arise in Australians who are born here – who have no other country – yet who are excluded or othered due to their ethnicity or religion. There are now untold thousands of Australians born here whose families hailed from the Middle East or Africa or Asia or wherever generations ago. They are not migrants – the Australian stories of their families go back only a little less far than mine or the PM's or Tony Abbott's.
If you do not feel like you have a stake in or really matter in your own country, and cannot fulfil your human potential no matter how hard you work, how would you react? What may this drive you to say or do?
The government's recently released response to the Multicultural Framework Review endorses the core principles of connection, inclusion, identity and belonging.
The Review devoted an entire chapter to media diversity and I'd encourage you to read it. In essence, done well, inclusive media representation is a powerful force for good. Done poorly, however, it can and does result in misinformation, miscommunication, tensions between communities, discrimination, bias and distrust. And there's much more to do.
At its core, the simple proposition that I think we are discussing here and should aspire to, is that the Australian media landscape should look and sound like Australia.
The simple truth however is that, despite progress, it still does not; and despite serious efforts it's a mixed scorecard.
MDA's 2022 Who Gets to Tell Australian Stories report revealed an increase in perceived barriers to progression for Indigenous and CALD staff behind the camera since the 2020 report, and Mariam can update us on more recent insights.
Falling profits are referenced in the Scanlon Foundation Research Institute's Australian Cohesion Index as a reason why sections of the 'mainstream' media shore up their customer base by becoming more partisan. That feels worryingly like a short-term tactic though.
On the positive, there's been a shift in the reduction of the use of gratuitous ethnic labels in media reports. You're ahead of the Parliament in that regard judging from some of the race-baiting Opposition questions in Question Time and general tactics.
SBS found that multilingual audiences who feel represented in the news are more likely to feel a sense of belonging – it's interesting that SBS is officially now Australia's most trusted news service.
Systemic progress and change though are easier said than done.
Having admired the problem from every angle, I don't pretend to have easy or quick-fix answers. Just as it takes years to foster more diversity and develop competent MPs, judges, Departmental Secretaries or senior military officers, it takes years to grow and bake senior media professionals.
In the meantime, you could though do more to mix things up. For example, by more consciously diversifying the stories that are told and who gets to speak. Come to Dandenong Market if you ever want to shake up the Vox pops!
In closing, let me offer a brief parallel with how I am thinking about multicultural policy more broadly.
Being a multi-ethnic or multi-faith or multi-lingual society is not the same thing as being a successful multicultural society.
Success takes, firstly, deliberate government policy. Secondly, targeted and sustained investments and actions. But the essential ingredient, is leadership in all spheres – political, faith and community.
I learnt a powerful lesson on the importance of leadership when I was first elected to Parliament in 2016. Bright eyed and bushy tailed, I turned up to Canberra and was genuinely stunned to discover that the then-Government's legislative priority was to weaken the Racial Discrimination Act, Australia's laws against racist hate speech.
Putting aside the surreal and bizarre nature of this, the leadership lesson was that words really matter, and that what is said in the Parliament has real world consequences.
While that debate was raging, led by Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton and the IPA cabal for whatever bizarre internal purpose or dog-whistling tune they were playing, my community experienced increased reports of racism and Islamophobia.
Random dickheads took some kind of signal from Canberra that it was suddenly OK to rip off headscarves or racially abuse people on the bus.
So, to repurpose that framework for media diversity:
Firstly, conscious and sustained determination: continue to affirm your commitment to change and support the work of MDA. 'Holding a mirror' up is important – the first step to recovery / improvement is to know what the problem looks like, and what is changing, good and bad.
Secondly, ongoing investments and activities. Again, the work of MDA and contributing via forums like today matters. Thank you for being here and for showing up. We are all better off when actions should be informed by research and evaluation not just the vibe of the things.
The Multicultural Framework Review has a myriad of good, practical ideas on what else can be done including utilising SBS, the ABC and community media.
Just as the public sector is doing, everyone can critically reflect on the barriers to entry, pathways and scaffolds to support people from diverse backgrounds to enter and succeed.
The practical things you are doing deserve praise, such as actively supporting people to come into newsrooms and accessing the MDA's talent portal.
And finally, but most importantly, determined leadership. More than anything, it is the people in this room – and unfortunately a few who aren't interested in attending – that can and will determine if change actually happens.
Not only because you will set the policy goals and support investments to meet them, but because culture is set by leaders and cultures tend to replicate themselves. Yet culture is the critical factor in determining if talented people of diverse backgrounds decide to apply for a job or not, and whether they stay or leave. Few of us are likely to work somewhere if we think we wouldn't be welcome or feel we aren't.
In conclusion, I firmly believe that an Australian is anyone committed to our country and to the principle of mutual respect for other Australians, and that despite our astounding diversity, we have far more in common than we have difference as Australians.
But we need to show this, not just tell people, through the stories we share on screen, on air and in print, the opinions we seek and offer, and the people who appear.
Media diversity really matters, not just for your bottom line or businesses, but for the very fabric of our country and democracy.
I wish you every success in your ongoing journey to ensure the full spectrum of Australian life is valued and reflected in what you do.