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

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.