Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

The Indigenous Languages and Arts program invests in projects to assist Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to express, preserve and maintain their cultures through languages and arts. The government has increased the focus on developing and using innovative digital solutions to record and teach Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages, assisting communities to meet their ambitions for language revival.

A major step is the convening of the first National Indigenous Languages Convention on the Gold Coast later this month. The convention will highlight the community-led initiatives and support the use of technology to address the erosion of Australia's estimated 250 original Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages and more than 600 dialects. Colleagues may be interested to know that today less than half of these are spoken, and many are in danger of being lost.