Delivered in Auckland New Zealand, at the World Indigenous Broadcast Television Conference last week on 26-28th March 08.

Good morning and thank you for that kind introduction…

I would like to pay my respects to the traditional owners of the land upon which we have gathered, the “mana whenua” of auckland and the iwi of auckland, “ngati whatua”, tai nui” and “te wai o hua”.Thank your for your generosity in sharing your country and your culture with us. I acknowledge the struggle of past and present generations and pay tribute to your efforts in securing your rightful position as the first nations peoples of aoretera.I pay my respects to the honourable minister for maori affairs, and the chairman and ceo of maori tv.
I would also like to acknowledge the presence of nitv board members, mr. Garth agius and mr ken reys who like many of you have travelled a long way to be able to be here today.My name is patricia turner kemerre. I am a proud descendant of the arrernte and gudanji nations within australia. I am also very proud to be the chief executive officer of the newly established national indigenous television service in australia.Aboriginal peoples have lived, owned and nurtured our lands for some 60,000 years. Torres strait islanders have done the same for 10,000 years. Australia was colonised by the british 220 years ago. The australian constitution was enacted through legislation in the british parliament and came into effect in 1901.

There was no treaty with our people and that remains a contentious issue today.

With the recent apology of the rudd government to the stolen generations, i believe, australia is beginning a new era in its relationship between aboriginal and torres strait islander peoples and the rest of australia.

The prime minister has turned the first page, but now it’s up to all of us to help write the new chapters.

True reconciliation is very much in the hearts and minds of many australians today.

Sharing our stores will lead to greater understanding, knowledge and hopefully, mutual respect. Such knowledge helps build a bridge on the road to reconciliation.

The power of television enables us to share our stories in a way that we’ve never been able to do before. By giving our people access we’re taking our own stories to australia, and in fact, to the world.

This is at the core of why nitv is so important. Nitv is at the right place at exactly the right time. Nitv has a major role to play in ensuring a strong voice and proper place for our people through the medium of television.

Now i would like to give you a glimpse of nitv. . .

That’s just a small sample of what’s in store and remember we have only been on air since july 13 last year – that’s just 8 months ago.

So how did we get here?

A national television service for aboriginal and torres strait islander peoples has been 25 years in the planning.

Through extensive consultation with government, the nitv steering committee developed a case based on a business plan and constitution. Ultimately, a funding agreement was created that lead to the incorporation of nitv on december 1, 2006.

I spent most of my professional career in public administration and aboriginal affairs. After twenty eight years i decided to retire from public service and return home to alice springs with my mum. I was asked to join nitv as a project manager for two months but i immediately saw the opportunity to seize the day and realised the potential of helping create this exciting new service.

I was interviewed and subsequently appointed ceo in january 2007. I recruited and appointed our director of content, paul remati, who is now my deputy ceo and he joined me in march 2007.

We actively recruited staff up until may, and consistent with the government’s wishes, got the service to air in world record time.

Nitv premiered, black friday, naidoc week, july 13, 2007. That’s just 19 weeks to get nitv from a concept to a fully functioning, working reality.

We started by ‘beaming to the bush’ via direct-to-home satellite and re-transmission in remote communities through the remote indigenous broadcasting scheme.

Much to the surprise of some doubting thomases, we achieved the remarkable accomplishment of getting nitv up on pay television throughout australia via cable and satellite. On the 1st of november 2007, nitv launched on channel 180 through re-transmission agreements with foxtel and austar. We’re not a broadcaster – we are a content aggregator which must find as many platforms as possible to get our service out to the widest audience.

We do not currently have any free-to-air spectrum, but we are working on that. We are required under our funding agreement to utilise imparja’s second channel. Imparja is an aboriginal owned commercial broadcaster who holds the open narrow cast license through which nitv operates.

We don’t just do ‘indigenous’. Other australian broadcasters like the abc classify all indigenous content under a single banner of ‘indigenous’, all our content is ‘indigenous. We service all genres.

We have not only met the required bench marks under our funding agreement, but we continue to break new ground.

The first national indigenous television news service commenced on 4 feb, 2008, – it is made by our people, for our people, about our people. Like everything else on nitv, our news service will grow through time.

Nitv has tapped into the enormous popularity of sport with two live-to-air footy shows. The combination of the marngrook afl footy show and the barefoot rugby league show are tremendously popular and well received. Here’s a snippet from a recent episode of barefoot . . .

As you can see, there is tremendous goodwill for nitv in australia.

We have commissioned a range of sports, both men’s and women’s, that have never been covered on television before, including, indigenous cricket, rugby league, rugby union, touch footy and golf. I don’t want to give the wrong impression that we only do sport. We have and continue to commission across a wide genre spread. We have, for example, in development an exciting series for school kids called ‘letterbox’ which not only helps with english literacy skills but more importantly, exposes kids to a wide range of aboriginal and torres strait islander languages.

Unlike maori tv, nitv does not have production resources. We are required to commission content from the independent production sector.

One of the greatest challenges is extending capacity.

It’s certainly true that there has been a long history and much activity in the indigenous media sector over the past twenty five years. Most of this has been within radio and today indigenous radio continues to be a vibrant sector.

There’s been a lot of activity in film and television production as well. Established indigenous media organisations such as caama have been producing quality content for many years as have some of the bush mobs. Community based production through organisations such as paw media (pintubi amedtyerre warlpiri) created series like the internationally popular ‘bush mechanics’.
Let’s have a look at some of the early work . . .

In yesterday’s presentation from mr. Brown of sbs you saw a small sample of a major documentary series, ‘first australians.

This series was produced by talented aboriginal film maker, rachel perkin’s. Rachel, who is on our board, exemplifies the rich pool of talented program makers in our indigenous production sector.

The sad truth is that until nitv launched there has never been a single, co-ordinated point of publication for indigenous content in australia.

Neither have there been the opportunities for aboriginal and torres strait islander program makers to build careers in the television industry.

Moreover, much of the traditional training models provided through the various state and federal film agencies have tended to focus on top-end production in documentaries and drama. Most of our film makers have come through the agencies and created high quality content in very low volume.

In terms of the broader community, indigenous content has been marginalised. Abc features a weekly half hour series called ‘message stick’, and the sbs has a weekly indigenous current affairs program, ‘living black’, which nitv re-broadcasts and we’re very grateful to the support and cooperation of sbs.

At the end of the day, the biggest obstacle to indigenous program makers has been lack of access to air time, particularly prime time. With the launch of nitv there is now a twenty-four hour a day point of publication.

But as you will all know, broadcasting is a very hungry beast with an insatiable appetite. To fill our schedule in our first year we have had to focus predominantly on acquired content. Unfortunately, there has only every been so much made by, for and about aboriginal and torres strait islander people.

Of that existing content, we face the further challenge of acquiring free-to-air broadcast rights. In many cases, content that would be ideally suited to nitv’s audience is not available to nitv as the rights are held exclusively by other broadcasters.

We are, however, actively working with distributors and other broadcasters to secure broadcasting rights.

All free to air broadcasters in australia have minimum local content quotas that must be met. Typically local content quota for commercial broadcasters sits at around 55% of broadcast hours. Unlike any other broadcaster in australia, nitv has a 95% local content requirement.

To date, we have consistently exceeded this target but we are of course, very interested in acquiring content from other suppliers internationally. So we are very open to discussions with other international indigenous broadcasters with a view to sharing, exchanging and co-financing production where possible and relevant.

In addition to commissioning and purchasing, nitv actively funds development. Much of our development has been focussed on assisting fledgling independent indigenous producers. Nitv’s editorial and commissioning policies give preference to indigenous-owned and controlled companies. We recognise that there is an inherent skills shortage and in many cases, nitv has teamed experienced non-indigenous producers with emerging indigenous producers to provide not only content for nitv but to assist in growing capacity in our independent sector.

We work in ‘show business’. To date, most of our program makers have fallen in love with the ‘show’. They’ve tended to be less interested in the business side of the equation. But without the business, the show can’t go on. So we’re committed to helping grow the vital business skills that makes the show go on.

When you add up all these factors, it’s clearly the case that nitv exists through the effort and commitment of a highly dedicated staff, a supportive board, the goodwill of government and generosity of the wider community.

We are the baby of the indigenous broadcasters gathered here today, but we’re growing fast and want to learn from the other first nations broadcasters the lessons of history.

While we might seem to be very similar to other brothers and sisters overseas, we have truly unique challenges facing us in australia.

What do first nations tv services have in common?

We all share to an extent the impact of post colonial issues including loss of language, loss of land, loss of cultural heritage, loss of identity and loss of pride.

Like virtually all other indigenous broadcasters we have a primary focus on cultural maintenance and promotion.

We too face the challenges of staving off cultural imperialism, not just from white australia but also imported culture particularly from the usa.

Too long non-indigenous film makers have been taking our stories and interpreting those stories through non-indigenous eyes

What we need to do is to tell our stories our way

So what’s different for us in australia?

We, at nitv, are under no illusions, about the responsibilities we have to all aboriginal and torres strait islander peoples throughout australia to realise our objectives.

Let’s take language. We have more than fifty distinct language groups within indigenous australia spread across a vast geographic area..

From byron bay to broome, and from the torres strait to tasmania, aboriginal and torres strait islander cultures are as diverse as the membership of the european union.

We are not bi-lingual, nor are we mono-cultural. This truly is a rich grouping of cultures and languages.

We do all this on a staff on less than 20 people – we are not “abc” that’s for sure.

Our small team feed on three primary principles: passion, pride and perseverance. We must work together for true sustainable change.

In closing, i hope i have shared with you a sense of our short but intense journey.

I am a big believer that from little things, big things grow. We as indigenous peoples can reclaim our future, by preserving and promoting our cultures, values, languages and stories. Like you, we want to share our stories with the world because the only truly unique aspect of australian culture is aboriginal and torres strait islander culture.

As indigenous broadcasters our collective task must be to strive for a successful future through mutual cooperation, communication and collaboration.

I look to our brother and sister services around the world, to your successes and achievements, trials and tribulations for assistance.

But most of all i will continue to look to the future, and build a sustainable broadcast service in this new era for indigenous australians.

Thank you to all for your time today