National Report on the

The BRACS Revitalisation Strategy 1992-98
1992 saw a turning point in the developmental history of BRACS and the whole relationship between the indigenous media industry and ATSIC at the national level. Following a review of BRACS conducted by the ATSIC Office of Evaluation and Audit in 1991, ATSIC realised that the project needed to be totally overhauled and properly funded. At an historic meeting of the ATSIC Broadcasting Policy Consultative group in Canberra in May 1992, representatives from regional media associations helped formulate the requirements of a strategy to revitalise the BRACS Scheme. At an indigenous media conference following the meeting, the groundwork was laid for the formation of the National Indigenous Media Association of Australia (NIMAA) in the following year, under the auspices of which the BRACS Revitalisation Strategy Working Party (BRSWP) was formed to negotiate and advise on allocations of funds to the respective regional media associations for implementation of the strategy.

In its January 1993 “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Broadcasting Policy Review Report and Draft Policy Statement” (“the red book”) ATSIC detailed a six year revitalisation program for BRACS, which would have involved a staggered upgrade of equipment for the 81 gazetted communities, co-ordination of regional training and provision of wages for one or two operators for each unit, assuming, unrealistically as it turned out, that regional councils would maintain their recurrent funding at around $20,000 per annum. This model would have seen a global allocation of $5 million to BRACS in 1997-98, nearly double the actual level of funding currently available to the sector.

In practice, the Revitalisation Strategy got underway with initial national allocations for three years of $1m per annum for capital upgrades (increased in 1995-96 to $1.5 m) and $225,000 for regional training (increased in 1996-97 to $250,000). The programme was extended a further two years until the present and indications are that this level of funding ($1.75m) could continue without the prescribed capital / recurrent split for three more years until the year 2000-2001.
ATSIC agreed to work closely with NIMAA in determining the needs and implementation detail of the strategy and in 1993-94 provided $199,798 for technical and community surveys to be undertaken by seven regional media associations around the country. These formed the basis of initial planning and budget preparation for the regional media associations who then sent representatives to annual BRSWP meetings where bids were re-negotiated by consensus and allocations to the different regions were proposed to ATSIC.
The surveys themselves did not get collated nationally, written up with recommendations and presented to ATSIC until May 1996, by which time the bulk of the equipment upgrades had already been carried out. This is because the NIMAA secretariat were unable to identify and employ suitable personnel on a proper salary to permanently fill the position of National BRACS Co-ordinator.
To some extent the lack of national coordination and planning meant that opportunities were missed for analysis of a variety of technical advice and standardisation of equipment across the regions which would have allowed for bulk purchase on a national scale, portability of training and overall monitoring of cost effectiveness and appropriateness of capital purchases. Instead, each regional media association went their own way, but by and large they have done well and communities across the country are now generally much better equipped with considerably enhanced production and broadcast capability. Details of revitalisation equipment provided by each media association can be found in the Equipment chapter and the regional overviews.
TSIMA already had their Newsom 1992 report “BRACS in the Torres Strait” and got in early in 1993-94 with a $500,000 capital allocation which, as far as I have been able to ascertain, was largely spent on a video equipment package supplied by GEC Panasonic to 16 communities. They were lucky to get this much, as 1994 saw the separation of all ATSIC funding for the Torres Strait and its transference to the Torres Strait Islander Regional Authority (TSRA). TSIMA were subsequently deemed ineligible to receive funds under ATSIC national grant programmes such as the BRS but they did continue to participate in BRACS Working Party meetings. Unfortunately the TSRA did not sustain the revitalisation programme as they should have and no further BRACS capital funds were forthcoming, with the result that Torres Strait communities are now far behind their counterparts on the mainland, especially in provision of more functional radio broadcast equipment, which is urgently required if communities are to be enabled to provide programming to a Torres Strait Radio network, as they hope to do when TSIMA commence fulltime transmission on their new AM licence.
TSIMA were further hamstrung in their efforts to deliver training to their communities, especially for video editing on the new equipment, as they were only funded one trainer position to answer the needs of all nineteen communities and had next to no travel budget to get them out on the islands delivering workshops.
The TSRA at least now appear at last to be addressing the issue of appropriate provision of funding to BRACS and have commissioned their own report. At my meeting with 14 BRACS media workers on Thursday Island we drafted recommendations and required budgets for community operations, TSIMA central co-ordination and training support, new buildings and upgrade of equipment which TSIMA have already submitted along with estimates of costs of digital conversion and SBS retransmission in a report from the meeting to the TSRA.
The other major failure in implementation of the BRACS Revitalisation Strategy on a regional level was also outside the control of the BRACS Working Party and the indigenous media associations. As detailed in the Top End regional overview, TEABBA were never given the huge share of BRS funds which they had negotiated on behalf of 29 communities in their region, nor, in some years, were they allowed to even compete for capital purchase and installation contracts, the Darwin ATSIC office preferring to pass the funding over to Telstra or private technicians without calls to tender, with less than satisfactory results. In some instances, funds were spent on transmission equipment for communities who don’t even operate BRACS facilities and generally Top End comunities are behind those in other regions in provision of production (especially video) equipment.
Top End training funds were either frittered in incremental top ups to communities’ separate capital disbursements or lumped into the big installation contracts somehow, with the result that, apart from the Batchelor College certificate course, there has been no resourcing of regional training co-ordination or delivery of on the job workshops. TEABBA have only finally this year been given Revitalisation funds to begin to tackle the huge task of providing training support for 25 communities.
On a national scale, training funds allocated to the Revitalisation Strategy were hopelessly inadequate to meet even the critical minimum requirements that media associations need fulfilled to enable them to support their communities. $225,000 - $250,000 over eight vast regions does not even fund one co-ordinator position in each, let alone the pool of potential indigenous trainers graduating out of the Batchelor Diploma Course who should be deployed in the delivery of community workshops and actual production support. If it weren’t for sporadic assistance from other programmes such as CTP, multiregional grants, DEET or other non-ATSIC sources, regional training would not have happened at all.

BRS FUNDING

Table 2:

Region	92-93	93-94	94-95	95-96	96-97	97-98	Total	98-99
TSIMA
Capital		500,000					500,000
Training
TOTAL		500,000					500,000
TAIMA								145,292
Capital	8,500		388,533	213,000	254,000	123,000	987,033
Training	12,000		12,500	35,000	40,000	20,000	119,500
TOTAL	20,500		401,533	248,000	294,000	143,000	1,106,533	145,292
PY Media								226,468
Capital		33,711	67,550	150,000	60,172	132,000	443,433
Training			14,100	17,000	55,828	100,000	186,928
TOTAL		33,711	81,650	167,000	116,000	232,000	630,361	226,468
Irrunytju								226,468
Capital				154,000	84,000	165,000	403,000
Training			13,730	9,000	20,300	60,000	103,030
TOTAL			13,730	163,000	104,300	225,000	506,030	226,468
CAAMA								122,352
Capital	165,000	144,000	140,000		34,999	128,000	611,999
Training	100,000	20,000	20,000	40,000	80,000	100,000	360,000
Comms		64,000					64,000
TOTAL	265,000	228,000	160,000	40,000	114,999	228,000	1,035,999	122,352
WMA								185,292
Capital			20,425	138,800	32,000	100,000	291,225
Training			54,501	48,000	54,501	60,000	217,002
Kintore			12,025	37,200			49,225
TOTAL			86,951	224,000	86,501	160,000	557,452	185,292
Top End						372,000	372,000	576,464
TEABBA				47,621	21,500		69,121
Training						110,000	110,000
Telstra				260,611	179,180		439,791
Batchelor					76,015		76,015
Comms			241,419	374,226	304,136		919,781
TOTAL			241,419	682,458	580,831	482,000	1,986,708	576,464
BAMA								267,644
Capital			231,120	60,000	274,000	167,000	732,120
Training		20,778	75,000	40,000	99,000	113,000	347,778
TOTAL		20,778	306,120	100,000	373,000	280,000	1,079,898	267,644
NIMAA		199,798		100,000			299,798
TOTAL	285,500	982,287	1,290,903	1,724,458	1,669,631	1,750,000	7,702,779	1,749,980