Exactly when I was happily fulfilling a lifelong wish of visiting a place where the size of the Maltese community more or less is, across various generations, as big as the nation it originally came from, I found myself flying straight into the eye of a storm that currently engulfs it.

Nothing to do with the hastened call of a general election or the continued back-to-the-wall antics of the GonziPN administration haplessly assisted by the fumbling directors of “Where’s Everybody” and their blue-eyed sugar daddies at PBS. Nor with the annual Christmas and New Year festivities that this year have been marred and tarred by a political situation that cannot be camouflaged by the big and colourful billboards littering the roads like smiling, benevolent dinosaurs wishing you fun and eternal love when you know the fire in their nostrils is being stoked for instant use the moment you down your last celebratory scotch.

The crisis facing the Maltese community in this sprawling Australian metropolis is the result of drastic cuts recently announced by SBS, the provider of radio and TV services to an amazing variety of ethnic communities, in the number of hours of Maltese language programming. Back home it may all sound hollow to people more concerned with deteriorating financial and job conditions at a time of economic and political instability, but in truth, the SBS decision to heavily axe Maltese language radio programmes from nine to a mere two hours a week comes as a slap in the face to a community that has always been regarded as one of the pillars on which the modern Australia has been founded and seen growing fast into the vibrant, multi-cultural nation that we acknowledge today.

It is no great hue and cry for street demonstrations and lynch mobs, of course. Maltese associations and Maltese representatives have made dignified appeals to the SBS authorities as well as to those in positions of power at State and Federal levels to rethink this slashing exercise, result of which, and the blood-letting, will come into effect in April of the New Year. While it is recognised that the number of Maltese living and working in Australia has been decreasing regularly for decades, as the generations that sought refuge from the Malta of the powerful interfering priests and corrupt politicians of the 50s and 60s either pass away or return to enjoy their well-earned pensions. But the resorting to such sledgehammer solutions against something that keeps the communities here in contact with themselves and their roots has, quite rightly, been considered as grossly offensive. After all, we’re only talking of a few hours of radio broadcasting that could not have been digging worrisome holes in the economy of this strong, rich and generously endowed country of natural wonders.

The last major review of the SBS radio schedule took place in 1994, more than 18 years ago during which Australia’s demographics have continued to change significantly. In fact, for the first time SBS will be delivering news and information in Malayalam, Dinka, Hmong, Pashto, Swahili and Tigninya, probably languages you have never heard of, and substantially increase the number of hours in their services in Mandarin, Cantonese, Hindi and Punjabi, which you certainly have heard of, to reflect the growing presence of people speaking those languages in Australia today.

This new SBS schedule was developed using a language selection criteria that is based on data from a 2011 census. It comes, however, at a time when ethnic communities anywhere in the world can actually listen to programmes of news and information from their countries of origin with ease and convenience that makes the Internet the phenomenon it really is. So why retain SBS?

It still makes sense to offer programmes to ethnic communities that not only seek to follow events in the lands they have come from, but also need to be kept up to date with all that is going on within their communities. Perhaps the Maltese in Australia are being unfairly treated, if not punished, for having been able to integrate so well and to be in synch with what is Australia today. Other nationalities that seem to want to get the opportunities and the future that the Aussie economy can provide while steadfastly resisting integration by the creation of “little” replicas of the places and cultures they come from, have been rewarded with more and more hours that can only keep them away from the overall cauldron they could and should eventually belong to.

It is a credit to a variety of Australian administrations that they have been, over many decades, willing to encourage and respect the various cultures that make up the fabric of the new, enterprising nation that has emerged since World War II. They could have preferred to expect each and every ethnic group to merely subscribe to one “national” template, but instead adopted the “cauldron” idea that still offers diversity and a sense of belonging.

The disappointment expressed by the Maltese communities particularly in Melbourne and Sydney is understandable. It’s been a hatchet job that could have been avoided with a little more tact and comprehension on the part of an SBS that has perhaps been too quick to overlook many years of dedication and loyalty. Francis Tabone, the Maltese High Commissioner in Australia, has reacted strongly to the news, insisting that the SBS decision “seems to be based on a misinterpretation of the data provided by the 2011 census which indicates that the number of persons of Maltese ancestry has in fact increased slightly since 2006, reaching close to 200,000 persons”.

This “ancestry” argument may be stretching it a bit, but the other facet of Mr Tabone’s representations with SBS – that the born-in-Malta population is ageing and “this sector would tend to need more broadcasts in Maltese” – somehow makes a lot more sense. Ethnic programmes, after all, should be a means of keeping the various communities in touch with the greater society of Australia they now belong to, rather than a mere, nostalgic process of social and cultural anchorage.

The Maltese Community Council of Victoria has been vociferous in its condemnation of the new SBS schedule in which of all language programmes on SBS Radio, Maltese has been the most heavily punished. A petition is being circulated here by registering the community’s disappointment and the wish for the authorities to redress the injustice. The petition actually calls for the reinstatement of Maltese language programme hours.

I do not think that the Council of Maltese Living Abroad (CMLA), founded with much pomp and circumstance within the corridors of Castille earlier this year, has done anything about this problem facing the biggest community of Maltese living abroad.

Added to this radio dilemma, the Maltese in Australia have also to endure the quasi non-existence of Maltese language television programmes. The weekly news service from PBS in Malta is erratic and often below technical and factual standards, while what has been an endearing production “from home” – the programme “Waltzing Matilda”, also from PBS – has not been resumed after its producer/presenter decided to call it a day after many years of dedicated service.

The one and only “national” Maltese newspaper in Australia, The Maltese Herald, is sadly also on the verge of folding up. Its current editor, Lino Vella, has been frank enough to admit the paper has not found the support it needs to survive in an ever-changing communications market, with Maltese societies in both Australia and Malta hardly raising a finger to help with the much-needed transition from what has inevitably been a rather predictable voice of news and information to a more vital and committed source of modern Maltese realities.

The New Year beckons and the future of Maltese-sourced information look bleaker, alas. The storm that has ensued, however, can be weathered with a bit more understanding on the part of both the SBS people and the Maltese representatives. Rather than punishing those who have been so efficient and willing to integrate and conform, Aussie broadcasters and decision-makers should present them as the ideal example to the new ethnic arrivals.