Good news — an Australian parliamentary review recommends a more “expansive” media presence in the Pacific.

Bad news — little of that expansion envisions a role for island media.

Instead, the committee endorsed a proposal for “consultation” and the establishment of an independent “platform neutral” media corporation, versus the existing “broadcasting” organisation.

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That proposal was among several points raised at two public hearings and nine written submissions as part of Australia’s “Pacific Step Up” programme, aimed at countering the growing regional influence of China.

Former long-time Pacific correspondent Sean Dorney last month told the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade that Australia was previously leading regional media spaces.

“But the vacant space that was left there when Australia Network disappeared, as people have said, has really been taken over by China,” he said.

“Throughout my time as the Pacific correspondent for the ABC, I saw this Chinese influence growing everywhere.”

Local media delivery
Dorney suggested local media ought to deliver news content in any future media expansion.

“I’ll just end off by saying that, if we did boost broadcasting again, it does require greater collaboration.

“There are excellent journalists out there in the Pacific that we could work with to create content for both of us. It’s our region, and I think we should embrace it.”

Similar points were made by Free TV Australia.

“Key to the success of the PacificAus TV initiative has been Free TV’s ability to work with our Pacific broadcast partners to ensure that the programming made available meets the needs of the Pacific communities.”

However recommendations for local staff were not picked up in the final findings of the standing committee.

Only “consultation” was called for.

Relatively comprehensive
Taking up ten of 176 pages, the report’s media section is nonetheless seen as relatively comprehensive compared with the dismantling of broadcasting capacity in recent years.

This includes the literal dismantling of shortwave equipment in Australia despite wide protest from the Pacific region.

Nearly three years previously, a 2019 Pacific Media Summit heard that discontinuation of the shortwave service would save Australia some $2.8 million in power costs.

A suggestion from a delegate that that amount could be spent on $100,000 for reporters in each of 26 island states and territories was met with silence from ABC representatives at the summit.

However, funding would be dramatically expanded if the government takes up suggestions from the submissions to the joint committee.

Members of the Australia Asia Pacific Media Initiative (AAMPI) called for the “allocation of a total of $55-$75 million per year to ensure Australia has a fit-for-purpose, multi-platform media voice in the Asia Pacific region.”

Overall, submissions called for greater recognition of the media in “soft power” calculation.

Public diplomacy tool
AAPMI member Annmaree O’Keeffe said that “international broadcasting and its potency is not recognised at government level as a public diplomacy tool.”

Consultancy group Heriot Media and Governance cautioned against trying to use media as a policy messenger.

“A substantial body of research internationally supports the view that audiences are likely to invest greater trust in an international media service if they perceive it to be independent of political and other vested interests.”

Heriot also noted the loss of radio capacity, submitting that “shortwave [radio] had been the only almost uninterruptible signal when local media had been disabled by natural events or political actions.”

ABC told the inquiry that around 830,000 Pacific Islanders access their various platforms each month.

Off-platform, there were 1.6 million views of ABC content via social media such as YouTube.

Jason Brown is a long-time Pacific reporter based in Aotearoa New Zealand and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s cutback in services to the Asia-Pacific region has “weakened the thin link” that many parts of the region have with the “outside world”, says the Pacific Media Centre.

In a public submission to the government review of broadcasting to the region, the PMC said that the situation had impelled Radio New Zealand to “stretch their resources to do more, to ‘make up’ for what has been removed”.

The ABC switched off shortwave services to the region in 2017.

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Calling for the ABC to restore services, the PMC said “Australian broadcasting from the South Pacific is a sorry loss to people and cultures – as we know them well from the accumulation of studies and from our own media production exercises at this centre”.

The PMC at Auckland University of Technology publishes the independent Asia Pacific Report, Pacific Media Watch freedom monitoring service, Pacific Journalism Review and other publications.

AUT’s radio major coordinator in the School of Communication Studies, Dr Matt Mollgaard, stresses the importance of broadcasting services from countries such as Australia and New Zealand to the South Pacific.

“[Broadcasters] help to strengthen local media outlets in the Islands, further enhancing democratic developments in the region,” Dr Mollgaard said in his PJR research paper cited by the PMC submission.

Media freedom
He said broadcasting services like RNZ Pacific and Radio Australia were prime examples of upholding media freedom and encouraging democratic life.

The PMC submission was prepared by director Professor David Robie and centre research associate and PJR editorial board member Dr Lee Duffield.

Restoration of Radio Australia services and other ABC services that may be made accessible in the South Pacific region, would be “highly positive”, said the submission.

“It would be most widely welcomed in the island countries, valued, and made good use of as in the past, with assuredly benefits to the originating media service and to Australian interests.”

The review is looking at the reach of Australia’s media in the Asia-Pacific region and if shortwave radio has become an outdated technology.

The submission period closed last Friday and the review of Australian broadcasting services is currently underway.

Public submissions have been overwhelmingly in favour of restoration of services.

‘Tok Pisin broadcasts’
In one public submission published by Asia Pacific Report, development worker Elizabeth Cox, who has 40 years of experience of living and working in Papua New Guinea, appealed for the return of a “revitalised Radio Australia”.

“Bring back Radio Australia. Ensure it reaches all rural areas,” she said.

“Provide Tok Pisin broadcasts. This is one of the best forms of aid you can give PNG.”

“A revitalised Radio Australia will give the PNG and other international audiences a chance to shape content and direction – it can be linked to social media and inform and lift the quality of much of the local political conversation,” she said.

“The new Radio Australia should be a global friend and ally, not a coloniser or converter. It should encourage debate, conversation and support critical, independent and objective opinion.”

The Vanuatu Daily Post submission calling for restoration of services said broadcast communications were an essential projection of soft power.

“The lack of access to the eyes and ears—and therefore the hearts and minds—of Pacific islanders works to the detriment of Australian interests,” the newspaper said.

“It also works against the interest of Pacific nations.”

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I am a citizen of Australia who has spent 40 years living and working in Papua New Guinea. I have worked mainly in rural areas.

I was based in Angoram District of the East Sepik Province for 20 years, and I have for all of these decades collaborated with rural teachers, village leaders, including women and youth leaders, community-based Village Health Volunteers.

(After my 20 years in Angoram, I spent a further 20 years in Wewak, the provincial capital of the East Sepik Province – where I continued to work for rural development across all districts, and in partnership with other provinces)

I have trained hundreds of community-based development workers over the years and admired their conviction to service their people through thick and thin, often working in difficult, dangerous and seriously under-resourced circumstances.

Together these thousands of people have brought health care, education, community peace and harmony, hope and optimism, to hundreds of rural villages and organisations. They have also helped to combat HIV and AIDS, teenage pregnancies, drug and alcohol problems and have been able to educate their people about the Constitution, laws, and the PNG government’s accountability to fulfil its global commitments to do the best for all of its citizens and the development of local communities, district, provinces and the nation as a while.

My work and the work of most people I have worked with has addressed specific development issues across a range of sectors and has aimed to support active citizenship for stronger governance at all levels of society and government.

Radio has always been vital to our work. It serves to reach, connect, network, inform, educate and more.

Source of information, education
Radio Australia was a source of information, education and entertainment to me and all of my networkers, friends, adult educators and service providers who stayed with and served the people.

Radio was a lifeline and comfort to all of these wonderful people. Radio always was and always will be important for the rural people of PNG.

For many years through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, Radio Australia was often the only reliable radio station reaching rural villages. They got their news through shortwave radio as that is all that they could receive in their villages.

Radio Australia’s Pacific team – in particular The Tok Pisin broadcasters: Caroline Tiriman and Kenny Kala, Pius Bonjue and others were extremely popular and beloved. If I came home to Australia to visit family, I would always connect with them and they would always include our stories and news in their programmes.

During my many travels out to rural areas give moral support and deliver resources to my friends and colleagues, they would often recount their thrill to hear about their development programmes that the Pacific team kindly broadcast on Radio Australia.

During my decades in Wewak, there was a long period when the provincial radio station was closed or on and off. It was unreliable and became so commercialised, that people’s participation and stories were no longer put on air

Radio Australia’s shortwave programmes are qualitatively different to local radio. They provide a vital window on the wider Pacific and Asia-Pacific region and the world.

Part of the nation
They made the listener feel part of the nation, region and the world, and not forgotten, isolated and neglected, as they now often feel.

Radio Australia shortwave broadcasts were objective and encouraged people to communicate locally about development and governance in their young nation. The broadcasts enabled people to know what is going on and to talk, debate, reflect and think critically.

There really has been no quality substitute. Local radio content news is dominated by people who have power and money – or who are partisan to that.

Radio can achieve as much or more than Australia’s heavily-funded current development programmes.

DFAT spends so much on consultants for so many different development programmes. Their reach is limited and confined to selected program areas.

Many of them don’t speak language that is comprehensible to the majority.

PNG citizens, communities, leaders, health workers, teachers, adult educators, animators, activists and resourceful people who contribute so much to the quality of daily life in their home communities, need Radio Australia as a moral and educational lifeline to their nation, region and the world.

Quality news, views
They need and deserve quality news, views, information, education and entertainment that is tailored to the priorities, needs and concerns of the majority of people of PNG – who are currently starved of such access and services.

Bring back Radio Australia. Ensure it reaches all rural areas.

Provide Tok Pisin broadcasts. This is one of the best forms of aid you can give PNG.

A revitalised Radio Australia will give the PNG and other international audiences a chance to shape content and direction – it can be linked to social media and inform and lift the quality of much of the local political conversation.

The new Radio Australia should be a global friend and ally, not a coloniser or converter. It should encourage debate, conversation and support critical, independent and objective opinion.

Use the technology that is most accessible and affordable for the majority. It could become Australia’s most cost-effective gift towards the progress in human rights, equality, development, democracy, good governance, peace and justice for all people in PNG and in all other parts of the world, that a newer and even better Radio Australia can reach.

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