An audit of NSW legislation and policy on the government’s public communications in languages other than English

Abstract

This article reports on a 2019-2021 audit of the framework of an Australian statelevel government's decisions about their public communications in languages other than English (LOTEs). This audit involved a systematic search and analysis of current New South Wales (NSW) legislation and publicly available, formal, departmental policy. It found a dearth of either legislation or policy about the language of government communications, but we present a typology of ways in which NSW law seeks to regulate choice of language in other Introduction: Why Audit Official Communications Laws and Policies? Public government communications are those directed at a mass audience rather than government communications to specific individuals. These are often therefore standardised written or audio-visual texts disseminated via official websites and printed publications, television, and radio. Interpreting and translation may be used to overcome linguistic barriers in government communications to either the public or individuals. For example, Auslan (Australian Sign Language) interpreting came to be used in daily televised press conferences disseminating public information from the NSW government about the 2019-2020 bushfires. 1 This article reports on an audit of laws and policies in NSW which guide/control such official public communications, specifically in relation to choices to use languages other than English (LOTEs) for NSW government public communications. The audit was designed to investigate laws and policies about the languages that may, should, or may not be used in any communications, in order to contextualise the subset of laws and policies about the language of public government communications.With 22.2 per cent of Australian households now reporting that they speak a LOTE at home, 2 how to reach a linguistically diverse public is a question worth considering in all Australian states and territories, yet the relevant policy processes, expertise, and co-ordination between government organisations and jurisdictions are still developing. The state of NSW is particularly linguistically diverse and therefore our initial focus. 3 In Greater Sydney, both NSW and Australia's most populous metropolitan area, 38.2 per cent of households now speak a LOTE at homeand in some suburbs this figure almost doubles. When major metropolitan areas are excluded, the proportion falls to just 7.4 per cent, well below the national average. 41 Tatham (2020). 2 Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) (2020). 3 The first author's broader research project extends to other Australia jurisdictions' laws and formal policies, and both authors have, moreover, extended the research to government communications practices. See Grey (2020a, 2020c). 4 ABS (2020).