Days of Our Lives: Multiculturalism, Mainstreaming and ‘Special’ Broadcasting

Abstract

The Special Broadcasting Service was the result of a series of ad hoc responses to pressures that the Australian Broadcasting Commission was unable or unwilling to meet. It reflected the Fraser 'liberal/conservative' version of multiculturalism, with its focus 00 the incorporation of the leadership of ethnic communities into the neo-conservative bloc. The mainstreaming strategy of the Hawke Government at first sought to reform. The 'marginal' institutions created by Fraser; it then abolished them. The SBS in the period 1983-86 had to face the 'new racism' associated with the New Right, hostility from the Commonwealth Department of Communications which saw it as an experiment which should come to an end, and a Minister, Duffy, personally committed to its submersion in the ABC. Internally, the SBS was a haven for socially conservative values hiding behind the defence of 'cultural maintenance'. Attempts to bring about change to a more democratic, progressive, and antiracist organisation thus faced sustained opposition. The decision to amalgamate the SBS with the ABC, which bas now entered a limbo, has done nothing to resolve those issues.