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John Corker & Rachel Perkins

Rachel Perkins & John Corker, Indigenous Television Working Group

Rachel Perkins

We're talking about Indigenous television and the review and we thought we'd get a bit of audience participation - we all love that - by just asking a quick question to demonstrate the importance of Indigenous television.

Who can name 5 Indigenous languages, of the 250 languages, that are Australian Indigenous languages?  Put your hand up if you can name 5 of the 250 languages.

We've got one person up the back.  We've got 1 or 2 people out of an audience of 170.

So, I suppose, for me, that reflects the way that not only the education system, but broadcasting services, have failed to deliver any sort of real understanding about Indigenous culture - which is definitely one of the longest surviving cultures in the world, at about 70,000 years - to Australians.

Broadcasting services have also failed to deliver to Indigenous people the rights that other Australians take for granted. Those rights are: to see your culture reflected on the television screen; see your faces reflected back to you; and hear your languages.  So Indigenous Australians are also denied that in their own country. Therefore we feel that this review is timely in order to address those issues.

And honestly, I mean, the only time you really see more than one Aboriginal person on television is when you're watching a Swans match, and there's Michael O'Loughlin running across the field - go the Swans!  You can name on one hand the number of Indigenous people that are on Australian television at the moment.

We have big aspirations for this review.  And it's not something that's a madcap whim at all.  It has happened internationally.  Maori Television went to air in March this year.  APTN has been running in Canada since 1999 - the Aboriginal People's Television Network.  The Irish language channel has been running since 1995.  ETV  - the Basque language channel - has been running in Spain since 1983 and S4C - the Welsh language television - started in 1982. In fact, they got so desperate to get their television station up that a leader of the Welsh community had to have a hunger strike until they gave it to them.  I'm hoping we won't have to do the same here in Australia.  As much as I want to lose some weight!  Anyway, but we believe it is viable to introduce the service.

Since the mid-1980s Aboriginal people have been producing Indigenous video and television programmes. 

The Indigenous units at SBS and the ABC have been integral in training Indigenous professionals who are now working throughout the industry.  AFTRS had its first Indigenous graduate in 1993 and now has the second highest level of Indigenous students of any institution in the country.

Aboriginal people won the licence for Imparja and run one of the four remote commercial television stations.

We have 120 Aboriginal communities that run the BRACS system, which enables them to produce radio and television and transmit it throughout their communities.  They also provide programming for Imparja's Community channel.

Aboriginal media associations are established throughout the country, and in most States, and most of them are producing video and all are broadcasting in radio.

The Indigenous Unit of the Australian Film Commission has been set up for more than 10 years and has developed a wide-range of Indigenous practitioners and programmes. This really came to fruition in 2002 at the AFIs - which was a watershed year - with Indigenous people taking out 4 of the top AFI Awards, including Best Director.

So we feel like there's a groundswell of infrastructure in place and the talent to be able to do it, and there are a lot of international comparisons that we can work towards.

 

John Corker

In relation to NIBS, this is a review that does have a discussion paper and I thought it would be worthwhile to back up a little bit and realize why this review is taking place, which is, that the Broadcasting Services Act was amended in 2000.  I think the amendment came from the Senate to have this review - so certainly there's not necessarily any Government commitment to it - but I think the Aboriginal Community see it as an opportunity to pull together the policy that's there and, as the sector is growing rapidly, for some way of looking at a national broadcasting service. In that sense it's probably significant also that Aboriginal Affairs is moving from ATSIC in the Communications area to the Department of Communications, which has always been a bit of a barrier in the sense of competing for money against health and housing, which has never been very easy for the communications sector.  So this is a strategic change at Government-level which may also assist things going forward.

In terms of the history of it, in 2000 the idea was looked at in quite some detail in a report that both Rachel Perkins and I were involved in (as were Malcolm Long and Owen Cole), called the NIBS Report. Commissioned by ATSIC, it was basically a feasibility study for a national broadcasting service.  It recommended that a national Indigenous broadcasting service should be established and receive public funds directly identified for the purposes of Indigenous broadcasting, similar to the way the ABC and the SBS are specifically funded to achieve their charter obligations.  The preferred model in that report was a stand-alone model envisaging the broadcast of 126 hours of programming a week, in English and Indigenous languages, after a 5 year transition to that position, with a production cost of about $38.7 million per annum. 

The report recommended using analogue spectrum for terrestrial retransmission to communities in remote Australia and in some regional communities.  But in relation to securing major city digital spectrum, it recognised that it was going to be a major challenge and, in a sense, I suppose, that's really the issue - the main issue - that probably these reviews and the Government were to look at.  It suggested 5 possible strategies:

  • spectrum be found in the review of spectrum for community television (already occurred)
  • spectrum be found in this review -sixth channel in metro markets be provided for digital use by indigenous broadcasters
  • if datacasting went ahead - a channel could have been leased from a TV datacaster;
  • a new Indigenous television service could forge an agreement with ABC or SBS for use of their part of national digital spectrum;
  • e found in the review;k together.or a 6 megabyte per second - 6 megabyte of digital spectrum - could be obtained from a national or commercial broadcaster.

Just as an aside, if the service was to be a multi-channelled national television broadcasting service, as that term is defined (that's what the ABC and SBS can do with their spare capacity), then interestingly, I suppose, that the existing programme descriptions (which include - foreign ie. non-English, language news bulletins and a programme about Indigenous activities and an occasional stand-alone drama programme model), might almost fit what a national Indigenous programming broadcasting service might be about.  But it really raises the critical issues of editorial independence and control.

I would just say one other thing.  We are lucky to have a discussion paper and one of the threshold matters is expressed this way: what are the real problems that an Indigenous television service would address?  I think the Aboriginal Group would take the perspective that this is not about addressing problems - it's just a broadcasting service, like any other, directed at Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.  It might carry Government information services but its primary purpose would be to inform and educate, as does any other broadcast service.

 

Rachel Perkins

So we have formed a working party to progress this issue and that's who John Corker and I are representing: Indigenous Screen Australia, which is everyone working film and television across the country.  IRCA, which is the Indigenous Remote Communications Association, represents all those BRAC's communities and people working in remote and very remote areas.  The Australian Film Commission is involved with our working group through Sally Riley, the Director of the Indigenous Unit.  We also represent AICA, which is Australian Indigenous Communications Association.  Plus, we sort of dragged in a few experienced white fellows to help us, like John Corker, Jan Forrester, Rod Bishop and others.

Our aim is to explore the models of Indigenous television and gain industry-wide acceptance of these models and then progress the issue with Government.  As James Cameron said this morning, the consultations are taking place in regard to Indigenous television and we would call on the Department, as part of those consultations, to make the costings that they are having done by Gilbert & Tobin into the various models for Indigenous television available to the public so that those consultations can be legitimate discussions about budget and costings.  Because obviously the amount of money this will cost will have implications for its feasibility.

In terms of Indigenous television, there are a couple of key things that we all agree that must underpin the service.

One is that it has editorial control by Indigenous people.  And this is fundamentally one of the reasons why we can't work within an SBS or ABC framework because they do not have Indigenous boards.  We have found that our programming on those networks has been limited because of that structure.  They may not have a desire to show Indigenous sports or sometimes they've said, 'look, the humour's too Aboriginal'.  So we have been restricted in terms of some of the programmes that we might have liked to broadcast as Indigenous people.

Additionally, we want a comprehensive programming service.  We want an Indigenous news service.  We want Indigenous sports. We want programmes that teach languages. We want programmes in Aboriginal languages that are sub-titled. We want documentaries. We want children's programmes.  We want to have a full range of programming and we have never had that available to us.

I would mention also that the Broadcasting Act stipulates that it is meant to service the needs of Indigenous people and it currently does not do this because it is not giving comprehensive programming.

Our programming, we hope, would be externally commissioned and a sort of channel-four model that would represent remote, regional and urban areas. It would include the range of programmes that I have talked about and would be a conduit for Government to provide information services, also.

 

John Corker

In relation to the issue of reach and delivery of the service, Rachel Perkins mentioned what's known as the Channel 31 community channel, the Imparja Television that runs in central Australia. It basically runs a separate stream of material (sourced from remote communities), up onto the national satellite beam and runs about 10 hours a day, every day.  So, in a sense, there is a semblance of a national Aboriginal television network out there and it's growing in size.  So the group's strategy would be to put the focus on programming and programme commissioning and to use the Imparja hub to - at least initially - have a DTH service which is what the Imparja Channel 31 service is now.  It's on the national beam and receivable by satellite and retransmissioned.

I suppose where that's going is that it's envisaged the service will go to Aboriginal communities in remote areas and probably the content will be quite different from a white broadcasting service and that a national Indigenous broadcasting service would be a service that would appeal to both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal audiences.

In the cities, I suppose the position is really that the Aboriginal network would want some sort of guarantee. We are really only saying that what would be adequate would be an SDTV service that would be a 4-to-6 megabyte per second digital channel.  It seems pretty unlikely that any new service could start in an analogue environment.  Really the opportunity for it, I think, is in the transition to digital - either part of community television transmitting to digital, or the reworking of what happens with the datacast channels.   The datacast channels are planned nationally.  They are available now. If the legislative restrictions were removed on them they could provide a full national service immediately, once the transmission infrastructure is put into place.

But from the Aboriginal television point of view, I don't suppose we have a particular preference.  All we are saying is, let's guarantee a 6 megabyte per second channel in the cities and in regional Australia.  But the service is quite happy to start as a DTH service on a national beam, using Imparja, and then put the focus on content - put the money into content - commissioning some decent content - and let the service grow in that way, as a cost-efficient way of generating what should be an important national service for Australia.

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