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Making multicultural Australia

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The World on the Box - SBS Television

Frank Galbally.

Frank Galbally explaining that SBS was for Australians to learn more about their society.

Created:

1994

Date Added:

26 June 2002

Source:

Making Multicultural Australia

Format:

mov (Quicktime);

File size:

--

Length:

32 secs

Transcript

FRANK GALBALLY
Chair of the Review of Post-Arrival Programs and Services for Migrants (which in 1978 recommended an extension of ethnic broadcasting), former Chair of the Ethnic TV Review Panel, and former member of the SBS Board.

It (SBS Television) wasn't just for migrants. It was for Australians to learn about how their society was - which many were ignorant of - a multicultural society. I said, "We want Australians to learn there's two (Australias), that we've got these people here - and many of them have been here for many years and helped to build Australia, the Australia we're living in now. It's a dual operation. We are helping the migrants to get into the mainstream of Australian life."

CONTINUATION OF INTERVIEW AS TEXT

They were the words I always used. This idea of integration and assimilation, they could be misunderstood, that they had to become like Australians.
I didn't think that I'd quite done enough (in the Galbally Inquiry) and it was coming to the end. And I went out to a park nearby one lunchtime and I just thought, "Now what would be the best thing really to help this matter, this whole problem, accelerate and be solved?" And then I thought, "They haven't this access and they can't understand the radio at times" although people were becoming more tolerant and there were some broadcasts, some stations were broadcasting and so on. And I thought, Television! That's where the migrant sitting at home feels enclosed. Open up the world. Open up Australia through television. Well, how in the name of goodness can that be done?" And I thought about it and thought about it. And nearly everyone said, "Oh no, there's no way known you could get a multicultural television." And I said, "Well I don't see why not."

Interview for Making Multicultural Australia, 1994.