Multicultural Media

Hansard ID: HANSARD-1323879322-134014

Hansard session: Fifty-Eighth Parliament, First Session (58-1)

Multicultural Media

Mr MARK COURE (Oatley) (19:29:05):

Today I recognise the importance of our multicultural media to our State and our local communities across New South Wales, including the Oatley electorate. As many members in this House know, we rely on the media every day to inform, educate and enlighten us. The media are, for many of us, our first port of call to learn about developing stories that impact our daily lives. The media, often noted as comprising the fourth estate, wield immense power in our society, possessing the explicit capacity to influence, inform and advocate. In a country like ours, a free, open and unbiased press is a central pillar of our democracy, as it is through the media that social, legislative and cultural change can occur. With that sentiment, I highlight the importance of multicultural media to our diverse, vibrant and thriving society. Engaging with multicultural media is something we can all do better, but we have a strong track record.

As a member of Parliament, a former Minister for Multiculturalism and now shadow Minister, I have always tried to make a concerted effort to ensure that multicultural media outlets are treated with the respect they deserve, reflecting the high esteem in which they are held by our many multicultural communities. Multicultural media played a crucial role during the pandemic in providing information to communities across the State in a challenging time. The pandemic provided one of the greatest challenges for the media as a whole, as the fast‑changing health advice along with the rise of misinformation created a significant degree of confusion and uncertainty in the community. But, throughout it all, many in our community, particularly those with little to no English, like my mother-in-law, who was born and bred in Lebanon, relied on accurate and targeted information to ensure that their lives and livelihoods were protected from the impacts of the pandemic.

I am proud of our track record of supporting multicultural media in this great State. During our time in government, I was proud to support a number of initiatives to help multicultural media, including new funding for language services that ensures that all key government announcements can be translated and shared with multicultural media; a requirement for council partnership grants to allocate 10 per cent of promotional budgets to advertising with multicultural media; and frequent briefings with multicultural media in conjunction with NSW Health, ensuring that health advice was provided in a timely and consistent manner. I conducted regular interviews with multicultural media to ensure that our diverse communities were kept up to date with priorities and initiatives designed to make their lives better. We advocated across government for agencies to increase their engagement with multicultural communities, utilising the immense reach and power of multicultural media outlets to do so. We also hosted the annual Premier's Multicultural Communications Awards to recognise excellence in the multicultural media industry. That is fantastic and they will continue this year.

Engaging with our multicultural media outlets is about not only adding their emails to a distribution list but also ensuring that we partake in media and non-media communication activities, making sure we deliver information to the platforms and media our multicultural communities use most. Multicultural media play such a critical role in our communities, in the Oatley electorate and across New South Wales, connecting people to their culture, identity and language whilst also keeping them informed of important messages. We are committed to further increasing engagement with multicultural media outlets. We believe that to truly connect with people in this State we must go to them, not make them come to us.

Engaging with multicultural media is crucial to increasing our cultural understanding of the many vibrant communities making up our great State. Multicultural media provide us with on-the-ground insights into the important issues facing the State's diverse communities. They play a crucial role in advocating for their communities to all levels of government, giving us in this place the ability to tailor our services to community needs. On behalf of all members in the Chamber, I express our deepest thanks and appreciation to the many multicultural media outlets that serve our great State. I say to them that my door and our door is always open. I am committed to continuing our great work together.

Ms LIESL TESCH (Gosford) (19:33:33):

I thank the member for Oatley for his statement. On behalf of the Government, I commend all our multicultural media outlets across New South Wales for their work during the COVID-19 pandemic, their continued advocacy for their communities, and for providing information to their communities and working with the Government to continue to grow our understanding and acceptance of the great migrant communities across our State.