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Ethnic Community Broadcasters Serving the Community

Ethnic community broadcasters play a very important role in building and maintaining a harmonious and successful multicultural society. Broadcasters provide essential information and cultural services to communities across Australia. Recent research undertaken by the Department of Social Services recommended increased reliance on radio for the distribution of information as it was seen as effective than much printed material.

To see a short video about the benefits of ethnic broadcasting click here

The contributions of ethnic community broadcasters are numerous

• Providing news and information that is essential for our communities to fully participate in society. For people of non-English speaking background having information provided in their first language is important in understanding their rights and responsibilities and having an understanding of their new society.

• • We play an important role in enabling new immigrants to settle successfully in Australia through specific settlement information, by building support structures and communities for people and by giving recognition to those communities' cultural background.

• • We play an essential role in distributing information about government services to ethnic communities.

• • We provide local programming in a period of increasing globalisation of information. This means that our programming is appropriate to Australia's multicultural society broadcasting standards which are not necessarily adhered to by overseas broadcasters.

• • We provide news from home for communities - news that is important to communities here as their family - their parents, brothers, sisters, etc. still live in their country of birth.

• • We provide an opportunity for people to learn new skills and to put those skills to work for the benefit of the community. As broadcasters we maintain across Australia the culture and language of the immigrant groups that are central to this diverse country of ours.

• • We are part of multicultural Australia - part of what makes Australia such a culturally rich and diverse place to live.

• • We promote understanding between people and a caring environment for our communities and the wider community.

Community ethnic broadcasters are representatives of their communities providing important information and cultural services to their communities. The ethnic community broadcasting provides settlement information and services to newly arrived migrants in partnership with agencies. The sector maintains a vibrant Australia wide ethnic communications network to the great benefit of Australian society as a whole. If government was to provide the services presently by the ethnic community broadcasting sector it would cost them hundreds of millions of dollars.