SBS unveils ambitious targets as Australia accelerates onscreen inclusion
By Natalie Apostolou
10-07-2025
Australian multicultural broadcaster SBS is raising the standards in onscreen representation for culturally and socially under-represented communities across its content commissioning and development strategies.
The guidelines come as the Australian sector continues to navigate strategies for greater inclusion of under-represented cultures and communities and amplify inclusive practices and opportunities for screen professionals across diverse minorities.
The Australian industry has made significant advances in the last few years in actioning the agenda of cultural inclusivity and instilling higher representation demands and quotas for professionals from First Nations and non-Anglo/European backgrounds, across the screen ecosystem.

Also needing addressing, said the SDIN report, are professionals with Asian and African backgrounds, who continue to have diminished representation across screen industry roles overall.
At the corporate level, this year both SBS and the ABC, the country’s bigger public broadcaster, made inaugural senior executive appointments to drive the First Nations inclusivity agenda. Kelly Williams was appointed the ABC’s director of First Nations strategy and Tanya Denning-Orman expanded her remit across the broadcaster as director of First Nations.
Yet, the second annual Screen Diversity & Inclusion Network (SDIN) report Everyone Counts 2.0, which tracks diversity in the Australian screen industry, reveals that much work is still needed to achieve parity and equality. In key findings from the report released this week, First Nations people continue to be well-represented in on-screen roles but remain under-represented in off-screen roles. Significantly, disabled people continue to be vastly under-represented both on- and off-camera while LGTBQ+ have strong representation both on- and off-screen with metrics growing across the 2022–23 period.
This report presents diversity data for 12,900 on- and off-screen contributor roles, filled by 6,976 unique individuals, working across 395 Australian TV and film projects completed in the three financial years from July 2021 to June 2024. The findings are then benchmarked against the general population. In unveiling its new commissioning inclusion guidelines for 2025-2028, SBS has strengthened targets aimed at addressing gaps in industry representation on- and off-screen.

“At SBS, inclusion is central to who we are as an organisation, and underpins how we commission and create content,” says SBS director of television, Kathryn Fink. “We believe that an industry without barriers to having your voice heard is essential to fuelling the ongoing success of Australian storytelling – both at home and globally. Our goal is to drive meaningful, long-term industry change by investing in the depth and breadth of Australian talent, on and off screen.”
The launch of the new commissioning inclusion guidelines follows the conclusion of SBS’s first Commissioning Equity & Inclusion Guidelines (2021-2024), with the broadcaster successfully implementing and meeting all targets by the end of last year.
The guidelines attempt to remove barriers when casting on-screen talent and hiring off-screen crew with a focus on representation of people from five key under-represented groups: First Nations peoples; culturally and linguistically diverse communities; LGBTQ+ people; people with disability; and women.
Under the upgraded new guidelines, SBS has raised the updated benchmarks for representation of people with disability to 8-13% vs the previous target of 5-10% and introduced a new sub-target for non-European culturally and linguistically diverse communities of 24-26%. The broadcaster says the changes address areas where action is needed across the sector, particularly in the case of over representation of Anglo-Celtic originated characters on Australian screens.
SBS’s scripted and unscripted commissioned programmes have targets for on- and off-screen roles, and for career progression, on a per-project basis. SBS will also track how it is representing key groups across its entire commissioned content slate.
In addition to SBS’s own targets for commissioned and internal productions in the projected period, the broadcaster has requested all scripted and unscripted partner production companies and internal productions with crews over 15 people to meet the on- and off-screen career progression targets it has set.
These include: meeting the suggested targets on each programme for on- and off-screen; liaise with the assigned commissioning editor and diversity and inclusion team as early as possible if meeting target are an issue; and track and report on the project’s efforts to meet targets.
Under the new scripted programming guidelines, main characters must include at least two First Nations peoples, and/or non-European culturally and linguistically diverse people, and/or people with disability. Furthermore, the wider cast must reflect gender equality of 50% women and 30% from the five core target groups and producers must demonstrate inclusive casting.
In the behind-the-screen guidelines for scripted projects, metrics shift depending on subject matter and depiction of under-represented communities, but generally the writing team must reflect 50% gender parity with two people from the (depicted) community. Demands are also made for gender parity for directors and producers, with the addition of one additional key creative from the community represented.
The broadcaster’s targets are both progressive and ambitious when compared to the SDIN report on the current status quo across the industry over the last three years. Key SDIN data shows that across the screen talent pool, 3.4% are First Nations; and 8.2% are disabled, with this group having higher representation of women (54%), gender diverse people (9.5%) and First Nations people (4.2%).
Furthermore, 20% of the screen talent pool are LGBTQ+, with this group having higher representation of women (57%) and gender diverse people (12%); 2.4% are gender diverse and 50% are women; 20% are aged 55 years or over, a similar rate to Australia’s ageing workforce; 8.9% speak languages other than English; 54% have Anglo-Celtic ancestry/ethnicity, 36% European, 11% Asian, 2.8% Middle Eastern, 2.3% Pacific Islander, 1.6% Central or South American and 2% African.
READ LESSAustralian multicultural broadcaster SBS is raising the standards in onscreen representation for culturally and socially under-represented communities across its content commissioning and development strategies.
The guidelines come as the Australian sector continues to navigate strategies for greater inclusion of under-represented cultures and communities and amplify inclusive practices and opportunities for screen professionals across diverse minorities.
The Australian industry has made significant advances in the last few years in actioning the agenda of cultural inclusivity and instilling higher representation demands and quotas for professionals from First Nations and non-Anglo/European backgrounds, across the screen ecosystem.

Also needing addressing, said the SDIN report, are professionals with Asian and African backgrounds, who continue to have diminished representation across screen industry roles overall.
At the corporate level, this year both SBS and the ABC, the country’s bigger public broadcaster, made inaugural senior executive appointments to drive the First Nations inclusivity agenda. Kelly Williams was appointed the ABC’s director of First Nations strategy and Tanya Denning-Orman expanded her remit across the broadcaster as director of First Nations.
Yet, the second annual Screen Diversity & Inclusion Network (SDIN) report Everyone Counts 2.0, which tracks diversity in the Australian screen industry, reveals that much work is still needed to achieve parity and equality. In key findings from the report released this week, First Nations people continue to be well-represented in on-screen roles but remain under-represented in off-screen roles. Significantly, disabled people continue to be vastly under-represented both on- and off-camera while LGTBQ+ have strong representation both on- and off-screen with metrics growing across the 2022–23 period.
This report presents diversity data for 12,900 on- and off-screen contributor roles, filled by 6,976 unique individuals, working across 395 Australian TV and film projects completed in the three financial years from July 2021 to June 2024. The findings are then benchmarked against the general population. In unveiling its new commissioning inclusion guidelines for 2025-2028, SBS has strengthened targets aimed at addressing gaps in industry representation on- and off-screen.

“At SBS, inclusion is central to who we are as an organisation, and underpins how we commission and create content,” says SBS director of television, Kathryn Fink. “We believe that an industry without barriers to having your voice heard is essential to fuelling the ongoing success of Australian storytelling – both at home and globally. Our goal is to drive meaningful, long-term industry change by investing in the depth and breadth of Australian talent, on and off screen.”
The launch of the new commissioning inclusion guidelines follows the conclusion of SBS’s first Commissioning Equity & Inclusion Guidelines (2021-2024), with the broadcaster successfully implementing and meeting all targets by the end of last year.
The guidelines attempt to remove barriers when casting on-screen talent and hiring off-screen crew with a focus on representation of people from five key under-represented groups: First Nations peoples; culturally and linguistically diverse communities; LGBTQ+ people; people with disability; and women.
Under the upgraded new guidelines, SBS has raised the updated benchmarks for representation of people with disability to 8-13% vs the previous target of 5-10% and introduced a new sub-target for non-European culturally and linguistically diverse communities of 24-26%. The broadcaster says the changes address areas where action is needed across the sector, particularly in the case of over representation of Anglo-Celtic originated characters on Australian screens.
SBS’s scripted and unscripted commissioned programmes have targets for on- and off-screen roles, and for career progression, on a per-project basis. SBS will also track how it is representing key groups across its entire commissioned content slate.
In addition to SBS’s own targets for commissioned and internal productions in the projected period, the broadcaster has requested all scripted and unscripted partner production companies and internal productions with crews over 15 people to meet the on- and off-screen career progression targets it has set.
These include: meeting the suggested targets on each programme for on- and off-screen; liaise with the assigned commissioning editor and diversity and inclusion team as early as possible if meeting target are an issue; and track and report on the project’s efforts to meet targets.
Under the new scripted programming guidelines, main characters must include at least two First Nations peoples, and/or non-European culturally and linguistically diverse people, and/or people with disability. Furthermore, the wider cast must reflect gender equality of 50% women and 30% from the five core target groups and producers must demonstrate inclusive casting.
In the behind-the-screen guidelines for scripted projects, metrics shift depending on subject matter and depiction of under-represented communities, but generally the writing team must reflect 50% gender parity with two people from the (depicted) community. Demands are also made for gender parity for directors and producers, with the addition of one additional key creative from the community represented.
The broadcaster’s targets are both progressive and ambitious when compared to the SDIN report on the current status quo across the industry over the last three years. Key SDIN data shows that across the screen talent pool, 3.4% are First Nations; and 8.2% are disabled, with this group having higher representation of women (54%), gender diverse people (9.5%) and First Nations people (4.2%).
Furthermore, 20% of the screen talent pool are LGBTQ+, with this group having higher representation of women (57%) and gender diverse people (12%); 2.4% are gender diverse and 50% are women; 20% are aged 55 years or over, a similar rate to Australia’s ageing workforce; 8.9% speak languages other than English; 54% have Anglo-Celtic ancestry/ethnicity, 36% European, 11% Asian, 2.8% Middle Eastern, 2.3% Pacific Islander, 1.6% Central or South American and 2% African.