Ethnic Broadcasters to fight funding cuts with lobbying campaign

Ethnic broadcasters have vowed to continue the fight to regain funding for the highly successful Australian Ethnic Radio Training Project (AERTP), which had its funding cut in the recent Federal Budget.

The funding debate will be high on the agenda at this year’s Ethnic Radio conference later this year in Canberra, and individual stations are expected to lobby local members of parliament about the issue.

Writing in this month’s Ethnic Broadcaster magazine. National Ethnic & Multicultural Broadcasters Council (NEMBC) President George Zangalis said:


“ Ethnic community broadcasters… are facing some formidable challenges in the months and years ahead… to meet the needs of the first, second and third generations… [and ] the possibility that the 25 year old bipartisan support for … ethnic community broadcasting may be replaced in the next triennium with a ‘more targeted’ approach.

“The non-funding of the AERTP – a most successful and economical broadcaster training program – has sent a chilly message as to what kind of weather we are likely to sail into in the immediate future.

“The NEMBC cannot contemplate the prospect of volunteers – mostly unwaged young people and pensioners who give so much of their time and often money, facing the unpalatable choice of paying big money for providing an essentially unpaid community service…”

About 20% of the money to run ethnic broadcasting comes from government, while the rest is raised by volunteers in the same manner as other community broadcasting.

The NEMBC is planning a lobbying campaign to reverse the funding decision and to expand the amount of funding coming to the ethnic broadcasting sector. The campaign will touch all ethnic broadcasters and will be made up of information sheets for broadcasters to use on air, plus audio and video promotional material and interviews with community leaders and politicians