The NEMBC has joined forces with its sister organisations in the community broadcasting sector to produce a lobby strategy and ask the federal government to develop a new policy that would see the introduction of 14 million extra funds into the community broadcasting sector.

The Value our Voices – Strengthen Community Broadcasting lobby document identifies the enormous contribution community broadcasting makes to Australian society and shows that community broadcasting has an ever increasing audience and massive community involvement.  An increase in funding will provide the potential to further build and unite communities.

The Community Broadcasting Sector is asking for additional :
Content Production          $6.591 million
Infrastructure                     $3.268 million
Training                                $2.505 million
Planning & Coordination             $1.65 million 

The ethnic component of the funding that the NEMBC is requesting includes an extra 2.1 million for Content Production. That means the $35 an hour that NEMBC members and stations receive will almost double. Training is an important and ongoing campaign and $250,000 per annum is being requested for the NEMBC to deliver culturally specific training to ethnic and multicultural broadcasters every year. Ethnic community radio will also benefit in planning and coordination, and infrastructure funds.

To Download the full Value Our Voices document in PDF format click here.