Diversity in Australian television shows has improved according to a new report, but industry figures are not yet patting themselves on the back.
Screen Australia's Seeing Ourselves report released today is a follow up to a 2016 study looking at the diversity of main characters in more than 360 Australian TV shows.
The report shows there have been increases in the levels of diversity on screen since 2016, including more First Nations people, disabled people, LGBTIQ people and non-European people.
However, the report noted representation of disabled people remains "critically low" and overall representation of diverse communities on TV remains below the levels in the general population.
Screen Australia's CEO Graeme Mason said the results in the report were encouraging, but the work to improve diversity on screens was not yet finished.
"If you wanted me to characterise this report I'd say we've done really well. It's not good enough yet, we don't give ourselves a gold star," he said.
"Just about everything has moved in the right direction. Perhaps not as fast as we or those under-represented people would like but everything's moving in the right direction."
The report found the representation of First Nations people rose from 4.8 per cent to 7.2 per cent since 2016, LGBTIQ representation rose from 4.5 per cent to 7.4 pe cent and non-European representation rose from 6.9 per cent to 16 per cent.
Disabled representation rose from 3.6 per cent to 6.6 per cent but remains well below levels in the general population, which stand at around 18 per cent of people with some form of disability.
In 2016, just 10 per cent of programs featured a disabled character, but that has improved to 29 per cent.
Mr Mason said more work needs to be done to include more disabled characters.
"I think because we're trying to make so many changes across so many under-represented groups. I mean that is a big challenge," he said.
The report found the levels of First Nations representation at 7.2 per cent is strong, particularly when compared to the population benchmark of 3.8 per cent.
Screen Australia's Head of First Nations, Angela Bates, said the figures were extremely encouraging.
"For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to be able to see ourselves represented on screen in shows such as Mystery Road, Total Control and Black Comedy, is powerful," she said.
"This result shows good progress and it's not by accident – it represents years of advocacy and consistent hard work to ensure our practitioners feel supported and are afforded opportunities."
