Building towards best practice for governments’ public communications in languages other than English: a case study of New South Wales, Australia

ABSTRACT

Through NSW’s recent run of bushfires and COVID-19, the importance of government communications reaching the whole public has become increasingly obvious. Other Australian governments, and governments worldwide, face similar challenges. Linguistic exclusion from government communications can create real dangers to individuals and communities and push people towards misinformation. It is a fundamental problem for societies founded on principles of equality, responsible government, and equal civic participation. Yet official government communications practices in languages other than English (LOTEs) are rarely studied. This socio-legal study brings both visibility and an analytic critique to the NSW Government’s public communications practices, building on the authors’ prior analysis of the underlying laws and policies in this journal. This empirical examination of web-based communications from 28 departments and agencies identifies real problems, even though the NSW Government makes some effort to publicly communicate in LOTEs: we found no consistency or predictability across websites in relation to the range of LOTEs used, the amount of LOTE content produced, or the steps by which it could be accessed. The study raises serious concerns about the government’s responsiveness to, representation of, and accountability to NSW’s highly multilingual public, and bolsters the call for more informed and strategic communications policy.

KEYWORDS:

• Language policy
• multilingualism
• multilingual communication
• Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD)
• non-English speaking background (NESB)
• Multicultural NSW Act
• Government Advertising Act
• equality
• social inclusion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For instance, during the 2018–2019 bushfires, the Rural Fire Service (RFS) in NSW was criticised for not including Auslan (Australian Sign Language) interpreters in official, televised information briefings. The President of the organisation, Deaf Australia, Ann Darwin, was reported as saying ‘English is a second language for most Deaf people and in a stressful emergency situation the likelihood of miscommunication is compounded’: Deaf Australia Inc (2020) ‘Auslan interpreters a bushfire lifesaver’ Deaf Australia Outlook Blog https://deafaustralia.org.au/auslan-interpreters-a-bushfire-lifesaver/. The NSW RFS promptly brought such interpreters on board, but then Australian media channels cropped these Auslan interpreters out of their footage of the official briefings. This, too, met with criticism: as one of the leading English-Auslan interpreters contracted by the government explained, ‘Interpreting saves lives’: Harriet Tatham (2020) ‘Auslan interpreters save lives in bushfires, but only if they make the TV screen’ ABC News Live Blog https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-10/auslan-interpreter-sean-sweeney-australian-bushfires/11848818. See further examples relating to COVID-19 in Grey (under review).

2 E.g. For example, on its third day of televised COVID-19 press conferences, 28 January 2020, the NSW government included an Auslan interpreter, and from April 2020 this was a regular feature (NSW COVID-19 press conferences and video updates from 26 January 2020 onwards are available here: https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/covid-19/Pages/press-conferences.aspx) while particularly at the start of the pandemic, attempts were made to prioritise translation of NSW Health’s communications into languages associated with then-key source countries, China and Iran: Tom Stayner (2020) ‘New COVID-19 communication campaign boosted for multicultural communities’, SBS News website (18 March 2020 https://www.sbs.com.au/news/covid-19-communication-campaign-boosted-for-multicultural-communities).

3 For Victoria, see e.g. Brigitte Rollason (2021) ‘Multilingual women are countering vaccine hesitancy in Victoria's culturally diverse communities’ ABC News Online (16 May 2021) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-16/workers-hired-to-counter-vaccine-hesitancy-migrant-communities/100141280; and M Liotta (2020) ‘Tower lockdown ‘confusion and distress’ could have been prevented: GP’ News GP (6 August 2020) https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/tower-lockdown-confusion-and-distress-could-have-bs.

Federally, see e.g. Finkel (2020) 4, citing: Australian Government (2011); Stephanie Dalzell (2020) ‘Government warned of coronavirus 'missed opportunity' to protect migrant communities before Victorian spike’ ABC News Online (24 June 2020) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-24/government-warned-failing-engage-migrant-communities-coronavirus/12384800; and Owen Gordon, S Mitchell and J Hill (2020) ‘Central Australia records first coronavirus cases as Indigenous organisations prepare health messages’ ABC News (28 March 2020, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-28/battle-to-keep-coronavirus-out-of-remote-communities-translation/12084886). See further: Grey (under review).

4 Josh Taylor (2019) ‘Liberal official admits Chinese language signs were meant to look like they came from AEC’ The Guardian (6 November 2019) https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/06/liberal-official-admits-chinese-language-signs-were-meant-to-look-like-they-came-from-aec ; Liz Main (2019) ‘Frydenberg, Liu win legal fight over election signage’ Australian Financial Review (24 November 2019) https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/frydenberg-liu-win-legal-fight-over-election-signage-20191223-p53mkb.

5 See e.g. these statements from international organisations: UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (2020) para 18; Word Health Organisation (2021) 28; Committee of Experts of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (2020); and academic commentary e.g. Piller (2020a), pp12–17.

6 The exception, in our wide reading, is scholarship on interpreting for non-English-dominant individuals in Australian courts, i.e. scholarship that does not focus on public government communication but on individualised/private interaction with the state, e.g. Hale and Stern (2011); Mohammad (2013); Hale et al. (2017); Judicial Council on Cultural Diversity (2017); Cho (2021) pp95–136; Grimes (2021); Rusho (2022). That research focus mirrors the focus on interpreted, individual communications in Australian governments’ language policies about public services: Grey and Severin (2021).

7 Grey and Severin (2021).

8 Grey (2021a); Grey (under review).

9 O’Mara and Carey (2019) p469.

10 Grey and Severin (2021), p16: ‘the NSW Government Advertising Guidelines […] are required under the Government Advertising Act 2011 (NSW). The rules operate slightly differently for campaigns up to $250,000, between $250,000 and $1 million, and over $1 million, but for all, ‘government advertising must be: […] sensitive to cultural needs and issues, and reflect the cultural and linguistic diversity of NSW; […]’ and ‘at least 7.5 per cent of an advertising campaign media budget is to be spent on direct communications to multicultural and Aboriginal audiences’. […] However, when following these rules, the content and medium of LOTE communications are discretionary, as is the language chosen and whether or not to pre-test the communications on linguistically diverse groups’ (citations omitted).

11 Grey and Severin (2021) p18.

12 Grey and Severin (2021).

13 Multicultural NSW Act 2000 (NSW) s 3(1)(d).

14 Grey and Severin (2021) p19.

15 Grey and Severin (2021), p1.

16 ABC (2020) 2016 Census QuickStats : Greater Sydney, https://quickstats.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2016/quickstat/1GSYD?opendocument#cultural.

17 E.g. Artarmon 45.8 per cent, Burwood 76.0 per cent, Chatswood 62.8 per cent, Strathfield 70.3 per cent: Grey (2020c) p5, citing ABS 2016 data.

18 ABS, 2011 Census QuickStats: 2010, NSW, https://quickstats.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2011/quickstat/POA2010. NB at that time, the ABS recorded ‘Households where two or more languages are spoken’ whereas in 2016 they recorded ‘Households where a non English language is spoken’. We agree with Benson and Hatoss (2018) p14 that ‘The data from this [Census] question undoubtedly underestimate the use of community languages: the question allows respondents to specify only one language and disregards language use outside the domain of the home.’

19 ABS, 2016 Census QuickStats: Australia https://quickstats.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2016/quickstat/036

20 Australian Bureau of Statistics (2018) Understanding Migrant Outcomes - Insights from the Australian Census and Migrants Integrated Dataset, Australia: Social and economic characteristics of permanent migrants using Census data for people that migrated to Australia under different entry conditions https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/people-and-communities/understanding-migrant-outcomes-insights-australian-census-and-migrants-integrated-dataset-australia/latest-release.

21 Australian Bureau of Statistics (2017) ‘Cultural Diversity In Australia, 2016: 2016 Census Article’ 2071.0 - Census of Population and Housing: Reflecting Australia - Stories from the Census, 2016 (28 June 2017), https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/Lookup/by%20Subject/2071.0~2016~Main%20Features~Cultural%20Diversity%20Article~60.

22 Piller (2020b).

23 The NSW Government reports that: ‘The largest changes in spoken languages for the New South Wales population between 2011 and 2016 were for those speaking: Mandarin (+100,179 persons); Nepali (+18,475 persons); Arabic (+16,557 persons); Vietnamese (+15,396 persons)’: Multicultural NSW, New South Wales Languages Spoken at Home, https://multiculturalnsw.id.com.au/multiculturalnsw/lga-language

24 Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia (FECCA) (2016) p1.

25 ‘New and emerging’ is a category recognised by the Australian Institute of Interpreters and Translators, Australian governments and the Federation of Ethic Communities’ Councils of Australia, amongst others.

26 O’Mara and Carey (2019) p251, citing Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia (2016) and Harris and Zwar (2005).

27 ABS, 2016 Census QuickStats: New South Wales https://quickstats.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2016/quickstat/1?opendocument#cultural.

28 ABS, 2011 Census QuickStats: Greater Sydney https://quickstats.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2011/quickstat/1GSYD?opendocument&navpos=220

29 There were 273 LOTEs listed for NSW in the 2016 census and 258 for Greater Sydney. Those numbers exclude ‘non verbal, so described’ and ‘inadequately described’: ABS, ABS.Stat Beta: Census 2016, Language spoken at home by Sex (SA2+) http://stat.data.abs.gov.au/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ABS_C16_T09_SA.

30 Benson and Hatoss (2018) p17.

31 Benson and Hatoss (2018) p17.

32 This article does not deal with the Local Governments’ own communications practices, but their actual multilingual practices and their potentially very important role in augmenting state and federal multilingual communications is flagged in Grey (2020a, 2020c) and explored in Grey (under review).

33 See e.g. the domain analyses amongst Sudanese peer groups’ communications in Australian high schools in Hatoss and Sheely (2009) and amongst New Zealand high school students in Starks (2005), or in relation to workplace communications in European banks in Kingsley (2013).

34 Maylaerts and González Núñez (2017) p4.

35 See Bannister (2014) on the long history of these principles and their manifestation in FOI regimes.

36 See FECCA (2016) p1. This rationale is widely supported within the specific context of health communications in the ‘public health literacy’ scholarship; as McCaffery, Muscat and Donovan (2020) put it, ‘A responsive health literate organisation provides “information and services in ways that promote equitable access and engagement, that meet the diverse health literacy needs and preferences of individuals, families and communities, and that support people to participate in decisions regarding their health and social wellbeing”’ (our emphasis).

37 This autonomy argument is expanded in Grey (2020a, 2020c). Similarly, Briggs (2019) and Kemp’s (2020) studies link access to information in local languages to the empowerment in problem-solving and decision making of people who speak those languages rather than the majority language.

38 In short, the argument is that it is good for both governments and minorities to enhance social inclusion, including but not only via multilingual government practices, because it reduces or makes more efficient government spending in health, education, criminal justice etc. See Piller (2012) pp281–286 for literature and international examples, O’Mara and Carey (2019) re Australian migrant inclusion. Benson and Hatoss (2018) p20 note that Australia’s first multicultural policy, in 1971, was ‘the first official discourse to describe community languages as a benefit to both immigrant communities and Australia as a nation’. A wider version of the argument is also sometimes made but is harder to prove, that government-led social inclusion through multilingual practices strengthens civic harmony in multicultural and multi-faith communities.

39 O’Mara and Carey (2019) p450, and see also Benson and Hatoss’ quotations from Department of Immigration and Border Protection policy (2018) p19.

40 Hamzy v Commissioner of Corrective Services & another [2020] NSWSC 414, and Grey (2020b).

41 E.g. Cohealth, a community organisation in Melbourne, surveyed migrants about COVID-19 information: ‘One of the risks we identified was information on those social media pages does not always come from credible sources’: Rachael Dexter (2020). ‘COVID-19 information bypasses Melbourne's non-English speakers’ The Age (17 May 2020, https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/covid-19-information-bypasses-melbourne-s-non-english-speakers-20200517-p54tq4.html). See further Zarocostas (2020).

42 Terms from Maylaerts and González Núñez (2017) p18. On failing to create trust through government multilingualism, see Piller, Zhang and Li (2020a) p1, and for analyses of overseas cases of governments’ multilingual strategies and practices in the fight against COVID-19, see Piller, Zhang and Li (2020b). In an Australian (Victorian) study, Vicnet (2007) argues that ‘the lack of government information online in languages other than English, and/or developed in ways that communicate more effectively based on non-Western attitudes and beliefs, is a barrier to services and support’ for migrants and refugees.

43 E.g. Briggs (2019) emphasises that language choice can increase or diminish not only the public’s understanding of official communications but also their level of trust in officials, their ability to contribute knowledge to the state, and empowerment vis-a-vis solving problems in one’s own community. Similarly, Kemp’s (2020) study of Ebola communications reports that study participants in the Democratic Republic of the Congo wanted ‘details on complex issues to inform their decisions, and they want them presented in what they referred to as “community language”—meaning in a language and style they understand, using words and concepts they are familiar with.’ See recent Australian examples in Tasha Wibawa (2020) ‘Push for multilingual COVID-19 resources to help elderly people who don’t speak English’ ABC News Online (21 March 2020, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-21/coronavirus-information-limited-language-cald-australia/12063104); and Peter O’Keefe (2020) ‘The Quality of Covid-19 Communication is a Test of Social Cohesion’ Language on the Move (10 December 2020) https://www.languageonthemove.com/the-quality-of-covid-19-communication-is-a-test-of-social-cohesion/.

44 Vicnet (2007) p3.

45 Vicnet (2007) p4. Its 2nd Recommendation, ‘Develop standards and guidelines for the creation of multilingual content’, echoes our call elsewhere in our broader project: Grey and Severin (2021).

46 Piller, Bruzon and Torsh (2021).

47 Grey and Severin (2021).

48 E.g. FECCA (2016) p1: ‘Training options for interpreters in new and emerging languages are limited. […] There is an absence of compulsory, coordinated training on how to work with interpreters for judicial officers, legal professionals and health professionals. This affects the rate of utilisation of professional interpreting services.’ See also Qld Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and Multicultural Affairs (2014); WA Department of Health (no date); and Women’s Legal Services NSW (2007).

49 Grey and Severin (2021) p3.

50 O’Mara and Carey (2019) p463.

51 O’Mara and Carey (2019) p450.

52 This was Vicnet (2007) A.K.A. Cunningham, McCombe and Sarkozi (2007) in their citation format.

53 See further our review in Grey and Severin (2021). Arguably, legislation is a form of public government communication, although its author is the Parliament not the Executive Government in the Australian context. Australian scholarship on multilingual legislation is also scarce but includes: Murphy (2020a, 2020b, 2021).

54 E.g. Paz (2013) ; De Varennes (1996) ; Mowbray (2012, 2017).

55 Namely by this first author, Grey (under review), Grey and Strauss (2022), and see Abayasekara (2010).

56 Key works include: Freeland and Patrick (2004); May (2005, 2012); Skutnaab-Kangas and Phillipson (1995); Skutnaab-Kangas (2000), Grey (2021b) and the NSW-specific interdisciplinary book, Multilingual Sydney (Chik, Bensen and Moloney 2018). Works that particularly engage with both linguistic and legal analysis include May (2011) and Grey (2021b). For a review of the recent ‘post language rights’ paradigm, and for an introduction to ‘language policy’ scholarship more generally, within which language rights are seen as but one policy mechanism, see Grey (2017).

57 Key works include: Kymlicka and Patten (2003). Works in this area that particularly engage with political theory and legal analysis include González Núñez and Maylaerts (2017) and Leung (2019).

58 Paz (2013) p157.

59 Individuals’ rights to government communications in a certain language are very rarely adjudicated in Australian courts, whether by reference to domestic or international law. The key authorities are discussed in Grey (2020b) and Grey and Strauss (2022), and include Nguyen v Refugee Review Tribunal (1997) 74 FCR 311; Iliafi v The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Australia [2014] FCAFC 26; and Hamzy (above n 40)

60 Ballantyne v. Canada, Communications Nos. CCPR/C/47/D359/1989 and 385/1989, Views, 11.2 (U.N. Human Rights Comm., May 5, 1993), cited in e.g. Paz (2013) above n 54, p195; by the NSW Supreme Court in Hamzy (above n 40); and in Grey and Strauss (2022).

61 Paz (2013) p164.

62 Grey and Severin (2021).

63 Shohamy (2006) p52. See also Schiffman (1996) p27 and Grey (2021b) pp15–16.

64 The NSW Government comprises departments, agencies and organisations (including state-owned enterprises). At the time of our audit of government websites in early 2019, these entities were organised into ten ‘clusters’, each containing one department and a number of agencies and/or state-owned corporations (https://www.nsw.gov.au/departments-and-agencies). The NSW Government has since been restructured. After the state election on 23 March 2019, the NSW Government was restructured into nine clusters (initially announced to be eight; https://www.dpc.nsw.gov.au/tools-and-resources/machinery-of-government/), which took effect from 1 July 2019 (https://www.nsw.gov.au/departments-and-agencies).

65 Missingham (2008) p28 explains the increased reliance of Australian governments on websites for public dissemination of information in relation to the move towards greater access to government, which also precipitated the federal and NSW freedom of information legislation, and the 2006 federal e-Government Strategy; its ‘objective is for easy and permanent access to all government information including publications’.

66 O’Mara and Carey (2019) p469. See also p450 ‘Information about health, education, employment, social support and other government support and services is increasingly made available online in Australia […] Online information is now critical to improving access to and use of services and support available’ (citations omitted).

67 According to the 2016 Census, 0.8 per cent of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population of NSW (1,792 people) speak an Australian Indigenous language at home. The three most frequently reported languages were Wiradjuri (19.8 per cent), Aboriginal English (9.0 per cent), and Bandjalang (4.5 per cent): Australian Bureau of Statistics (2019) ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Population – New South Wales: 2016 Census Data Summary’ 2071.0 - Census of Population and Housing: Reflecting Australia - Stories from the Census, 2016 (23 May 2019), https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]/Lookup/2071.0Main+Features100012016?OpenDocument.

68 For an introduction to Indigenous varieties of English, ie “Aboriginal Englishes”, and the Standard Australian English variety, see e.g. Butcher (2008); Eades (2013); Malcom (2013). On the importance of linguistic representation of Indigenous languages by the state (including the Parliament, not only government departments and agencies), see e.g. Murphy (2020b) and Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications (2020).

69 E.g. Our sample included the NSW Department of Education website’s Anaphylaxis Procedures audio message in 38 languages.

70 Grey’s reconnaissance interviews. Rascon (2018) makes a similar point.

71 Shane Desiatnik, ‘Fire safety booklet launched for Jewish community’ The Australian Jewish News (5 June 2020) https://ajn.timesofisrael.com/fire-safety-booklet-launched-for-jewish-community/?fbclid=IwAR2nouCwrs8azEpq22-wUfiv-3bmevjGYiV56SIOvuGbtsgQStG0OFhLtJk

72 Data on Cantonese literacy rates in Australia is not available.

73 Matthews and Yip (2011), pp6–7.

74 They were: Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Vietnamese, Arabic, Korean, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Turkish.

75 NSW’s eight most popular LOTEs are Mandarin, Arabic, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Greek, Italian, Tagalog/Filipino, Hindi: Multicultural NSW, New South Wales Language Spoken at Home https://multiculturalnsw.id.com.au/multiculturalnsw/lga-language.

76 Tagalog and Filipino are treated separately within the Census data; however, NSW Government entities use both names but never offer both at once, with the exception of the Office of Local Government, which offers a factsheet in ‘Tagalog/Filipino’. If the Tagalog and Filipino Census numbers are combined to reflect how they are treated on NSW Government websites, the ten most popular LOTE in NSW remain the same; however, Tagalog/Filipino then takes 7th (0.9 per cent) rather than 10th (0.6 per cent) place. To combine them in this way follows the observation by Lising (2019) p211, that the labels Filipino and Tagalog in the 2016 Census ‘can refer to one and the same language’.

77 Two of these sites – Treasury and Service NSW – do provide a machine translation widget on their website.

78 Our count reflects the 37 languages used on one of the many Education factsheets (Anaphylaxis Procedures for Schools Appendix 1) as well as the languages used for the ‘audio message’ on the same Education site; the audio message is offered in the same 37 languages as the factsheet, plus Cantonese, i.e. totalling 38.

79 For example the Google widget, which we found to be the preferred widget on NSW Government websites, makes automated translations available in: Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Basque, Belarusian, Bengali, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Cebuano, Chichewa, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Corsican, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Galician, Georgian, German, Greek, Gujarati, Haitian Creole, Hausa, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Hindi, Hmong, Hungarian, Icelandic, Igbo, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Kannada, Kazakh, Khmer, Kinyarwanda, Korean, Kurdish (Kurmanji), Kyrgyz, Lao, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Macedonian, Malagasy, Malay, Malayalam, Maltese, Maori, Marathi, Mongolian, Myanmar (Burmese), Nepali, Norwegian, Odia (Oriya), Pashto, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Samoan, Scots Gaelic, Serbian, Sesotho, Shona, Sindhi, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Spanish, Sudanese, Swahili, Swedish, Tajik, Tamil, Tatar, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uyghur, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Welsh, Xhosa, Yiddish, Yoruba, and Zulu.

80 Samuel Laübli, Rico Sennrich and Martin Volk (2018) ‘Has Machine Translation Achieved Human Parity? A Case for Document-level Evaluation’ arXiv.org (Cornell University) https://arxiv.org/pdf/1808.07048.pdf. For an Australian examples of this auto-translation problem, see: Stephanie Dalzell (2020) ‘Federal Government used Google Translate for COVID-19 messaging aimed at multicultural communities’ ABC News Online https://amp.abc.net.au/article/12897200?__twitter_impression=true; and O’Keefe (2020) (above n 41).

81 O’Mara and Carey (2019) p467, citing Hale and Liddicoat (2015). See also O’Mara and Carey (2019) p451.

82 There are 15 people in NSW who speak Basque at home according to the 2016 census, making it the 224th most common of 273 languages.

83 34,606 people use Nepali at home in NSW as per 2016 census (11th most common LOTE of 273).

84 This widget’s options were: Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Basque, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, Georgian, German, Greek, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Maltese, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese, Welsh and Yiddish.

85 Piller, Bruzon and Torsh (2021) p1.

86 See further analysis of the NSW Health website in Grey (2020c).

87 FACS and ICAC provide links to ‘language help’ available at the bottom of the page, indicated in those LOTE for ICAC and in both English and the relevant LOTE for FACS. The NSW Electoral Commission provides the names of five LOTEs in those languages in the top corner of the page, but if you click on any of them it takes you to a page with information in 24 LOTEs. Multicultural NSW has links at the top and bottom of the page, with the text ‘in my language’ at the top and the names in the relevant LOTE at the bottom.

88 O’Mara and Carey (2019) p451.

89 For the 2019 structure, see https://www.budget.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/budget-2018-06/6._Justice_Cluster-BP3-Budget_201819.pdf.

90 The ‘Stronger Communities’ cluster focuses on emergency services, law enforcement, the justice system, multiculturalism, and sport, and includes the Department of Communities and Justice and agencies such as the NSW Rural Fire Service, the NSW Police Force, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Multicultural NSW, and the NSW Institute of Sport.

91 See the RFS state-wide map for further information regarding NSW fire districts: https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0015/13326/NSWRFS_AreaCommands_A3.pdf.

92 While it is outside the study’s parameters, it is worth noting by way of comparison that translated factsheets for the NSW Rural Fire Service are available in Arabic, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Spanish, Tagalog and Vietnamese, i.e. 11 rather than 27 languages, with these languages only loosely corresponding to the speaker populations in NSW.

93 In addition, we found that some of the translated fact sheets actually cannot render in a browser i.e. they are illegible/inaccessible, e.g. the Persian general fire safety factsheet at https://www.fire.nsw.gov.au/gallery/files/pdf/translated_factsheets/persian/pdf/22_home_security.pdf and a Hindi smoke alarm factsheets at https://www.fire.nsw.gov.au/gallery/files/pdf/translated_factsheets/hindi/pdf/11a_smoke_alarm_legislation.pdf. There were 17 Mandarin Chinese factsheets across two sets: see further n96.

94 Home Fire Safety Checklist; Smoke Alarms In The Home; Home Fire Escape Plan; Winter Fire Safety Checklist; Children And Fire Fascination; Home Bushfire Preparation/Safety; Home Security And Fire Safety/General Fire Safety; Household Chemical Safety; Kitchen Fire Safety; Total Fire Bans In NSW.

95 We found 26 Factsheets in Chinese but this includes duplicates – 9 of the 10 factsheets labelled ‘Chinese Simplified’ had the same content as 9 of the 16 labelled ‘Chinese’, so it’s 17 separate Mandarin factsheets across 2 different scripts.

96 Since our audit took place, additional video content on staying safe in the home has been made available on the site; these videos are available in Arabic (2 videos), Armenian, Chinese, Filipino, Hindi, Indonesian, Spanish and Thai (1 video each).

97 Australian Bureau of Statistics (2017) ‘Cultural Diversity In Australia, 2016: 2016 Census Article’ 2071.0 - Census of Population and Housing: Reflecting Australia - Stories from the Census, 2016 (28 June 2017), https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/Lookup/by%20Subject/2071.0~2016~Main%20Features~Cultural%20Diversity%20Article~60.

98 Multicultural NSW, Language – Arabic: Age and sex https://multiculturalnsw.id.com.au/multiculturalnsw/language-by-age-and-gender?COIID=4202

99 To give further detail, Dinka’s factsheets were last revised in 2007 (n = 10); Vietnamese saw one factsheet revised in 2012; and Chinese (Simplified) saw three factsheets revised in 2012 and one in 2013. It is not clear from the Fire & Rescue NSW website whether these ‘revisions’ were in fact the first time the content was added to the site (i.e. whether these are in fact additions rather than revisions).

100 Vicnet (2007) p8. Grey (under review) looks at this updateability issue further in relation to in unequal access to information as the content of government communications changed rapidly early in the Covid-19 pandemic.

101 For an accessible introduction to this literature, see Pierpaolo di Carlo (2020) ‘Message- vs. community-centered models in risk communication’ Language On The Move https://www.languageonthemove.com/message-vs-community-centered-models-in-risk-communication/.

102 Grey (2020c); Grey (2021a); Grey (under review).

103 Uekusa (2019).

104 Grey and Severin (2021).

105 Our guess is because the emergency number (000) does not provide LOTE services, so Ambulance NSW do not want to misrepresent their services as being accessible to speakers of LOTEs. Their website now also links to an English course about calling an ambulance rather than LOTE content.

106 Grey and Severin (2021).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alexandra Grey

Alexandra Grey is a Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the University of Technology Sydney, Faculty of Law: [email protected].

Alyssa A. Severin

Alyssa A. Severin is a Unit Co-ordinator in the University of New England Department of Linguis- tics and a tutor in the Macquarie University Department of Linguistics.