There's no topic more fashionable in the US and other Anglo-centric countries than diversity, or rather the lack of it. Institutional bias against minorities and women was the talk of this year's Academy Awards presentation, and last year too. Complaints about the lack of diversity in British dramatic arts are almost a media staple – to the extent that both public broadcasters, the BBC and Channel 4, have instituted diversity strategies.
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So there was a degree of inevitability in the subject that Michelle Guthrie chose to air in a email to staff introducing herself as the ABC's new managing director. "Australia is changing and we need to change with it," Ms Guthrie wrote. "Shaped by my background and work experience, I passionately believe that the ABC should be relevant to all citizens ... we must extend our reach and our relevance into areas where we are under-represented [meaning] more diversity in both our staff and our content".
Ms Guthrie faces a Senate Estimates hearing on Thursday where questions about funding and efficiency are expected to dominate proceedings. An unequivocal commitment to extending the public broadcaster's reach and relevance would seem to be an astute way to approach that hearing, even if such a pledge would seem to be a statement of the obvious.
Large publicly funded organisations have always been susceptible to charges of insular thinking and resistance to change. That's particularly the case with the ABC, whose broadly worded public charter is open to nit-picking by those with ideological wheelbarrows to push. Bureaucratic and cumbersome it certainly is, but the ABC is not especially hidebound in using presenters and journalists from non Anglo-Celtic backgrounds – as it demonstrated when it hired Trisha Goddard as a current affairs presenter in the mid 1980s.
With the imperative for ratings at the ABC nearly on a par with that of its commercial rivals, much of the broadcaster's television and radio content is tailored to appeal to the widest audiences possible. There is more content aimed at lesbian, gay and bisexual audiences, and more people from ethnic minorities either fronting news and current programs or appearing as guests. The number of ethnic characters featured in ABC drama productions is rising.
Whether this programming accurately reflects Australia's current demographic make-up – or whether indeed this should be a statutory requirement of the ABC given the existence of the Special Broadcasting Service – is a more ticklish issue. Australia's increasing cultural diversity is certainly noticeable, even if its Anglo-Celtic heritage remains more noticeable.
Due recognition of Australia's ethnic minorities is an ingrained aspect of our multi-cultural heritage, with experience suggesting that popular acceptance of new population groups occurs by osmosis – and that if it's slow it's generally ineluctable. In that respect it was reassuring to hear that Ms Guthrie did not raise the prospect of charters, quotas or targets at the ABC. To be prescriptive about matters where talent and audience tastes should be the final arbiter is taking cultural relativism too far.
