Show Attuned To Remote Need For News

AN Aboriginal language radio show is attempting to transform the way government interacts with South Australia’s most isolated communities.

The Paper Tracker radio program, launched by welfare agency Uniting Communities a year ago, has established a badly needed information service for people living in the troubled Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands of far-north South Australia.

With a shoe-string budget and the assistance of translator Rose Lester, the agency’s indigenous policy manager, Jonathan Nicholls, attempts to explain state and federal indigenous affairs policies to the people they affect.

“I think we put out more information in Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara language than all of the state government agencies and the federal government combined,” Nicholls said.

“So much information is flying around in English that is inaccessible to Anangu (the Aboriginal people of the region) and with our tiny resources we are able to show it is not that difficult to give people good information. Why the government isn’t doing this is beyond me.”

Nicholls and Lester record a half-hour program every week in the Radio Adelaide studios, which is then broadcast into Port Augusta, Alice Springs and the APY Lands through PY Media.

In the past 12 months, the pair have interviewed state and federal government officials, including two state Aboriginal affairs ministers, attempting to get clear information on what is happening into the APY Lands.

“It is like trying to move through treacle – they want to drown us in bureaucratic babble,” Nicholls said. “But I think we have done a good job of shaming governments into providing updates.”

The radio program is an offshoot of Uniting Communities’ Paper Tracker project, which has meticulously tracked government policies affecting the APY Lands for the past five years.

Its monthly newsletter now has 1300 subscribers.

Lester approached Nicholls about translating the information into Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara after discovering the website while searching for information regarding a mining project in the region.

“I had a personal gripe because I was living on country and there was never enough information coming through,” she said.

“I was really impressed with the website and I thought it would be excellent to have that information out there.”

The pair intend to sharpen the focus of the program over the next year to the “big issues” affecting the region and its 2000-strong population.

“We are only a small project but we like to think we keep important issues in the public mind,” Nicholls said. “We need to try to keep governments honest and to get them to talk straight.”