Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to voice the concerns of the Maltese community I represent, and the wider Maltese community throughout Australia, regarding the cuts to SBS Maltese language services. I am privileged to represent a large Maltese community in this place, and I have worked with that community in the past to ensure they have access to appropriate levels of Maltese content on the Special Broadcasting Service. This community relies heavily on the vitally important language services SBS provides, and the community has made it clear that they want these services to be maintained.

The Maltese community has a large older population that relies on language services, as often their English language proficiency is not very high. This demand for Maltese language content is not helped by the comparative limited availability of Maltese community news outlets in Australia. SBS provides one of the few language services that broadcast such vital community information.

As the vice-president of the Maltese Community Council of New South Wales, MrEmanuel Camilleri, has said:

The Maltese community is getting older, and as there are not newspapers anymore, radio is the only avenue of news and communication they have left.

It is therefore extremely disappointing that due to the Abbot government's broken promises and funding cuts to the SBS, the number of hours dedicated to Maltese language services has been reduced. SBS has announced that the digital-only Maltese programs will be cut. Overall, this will see a reduction in content from four hours per week to two. Understandably, the Maltese community is very disappointed with this decision. One of the few Maltese community publications, The Voice of the Maltese, co-edited by Mr Lawrence Dimech and Mr Joseph Cutajar, recently editorialised:

Without giving a reasonable excuse why they want to discontinue two hours from the existing four allocated to the Maltese community, SBS Radio once again has disregarded the needs of our community.

The Maltese Community Council of New South Wales and the Maltese Community Council of Victoria have also protested against this decision, and I have been very willing to support their submission to the SBS to reverse these changes.

Today, I intend to table the signatures of hundreds of Maltese community members who want these hours reinstated for Maltese community language programs. The community is speaking with a united voice that these are retrograde changes that will have an adverse impact on the community. I did write to the managing director of SBS, Mr Michael Ebeid, on behalf of the Maltese Community Council of New South Wales, earlier this year, and I appreciate Mr Ebeid taking the time to respond. In his correspondence dated 5 August Mr Ebeid says:

We are unable to extend this two year period of additional digital only programming, as SBS's funding situation has worsened in the two years since this announcement with a further $55 million cut from the government in late 2014.

This is the $55 million cut to the SBS that the Prime Minister expressly ruled out the night before the 2013 election in that now infamous interview in Penrith with SBS's Anton Enus in which the now Prime Minister looked down the barrel of a camera and promised:

No cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS.

These are the words that will hang like an albatross around this Prime Minister's neck all the way up to the next election. This government was elected on a clear platform of no cuts to the SBS and instead it has delivered millions of dollars worth of cuts that have hit content and have greatly adversely impacted on the Australian community, as these hundreds of signatures will attest. This is a complete and utter betrayal of the Maltese community, which relies on these services. I urge this government to reverse its cuts to the SBS. I table these signatures from the Maltese community.

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