The first federal member of parliament of Palestinian Arab descent has called out SBS’s decision to continue referring to Palestine as the Occupied Palestinian Territories as the public broadcaster claimed its staff had no problem with its decision.

In a statement in the House of Representatives on Thursday, Basem Abdo, the Labor member for Calwell in Victoria, said that SBS’s updated editorial guidance, reported by this masthead on Wednesday, goes against the government’s historic step of recognising the State of Palestine and flies in the face of its stated role of fostering multiculturalism in Australia.

“SBS, a multicultural, multilingual national public broadcaster, no less, an institution which Australians are rightly proud of, which considers itself home to Australian multicul

See Full Page