2026 AGM PRESIDENT’S REPORT

DRAFT
DOCUMENT

Last year was definitely our quietest year.  The 2025 AGM was back to a face-to-face one with one member attending electronically as per our updated Constitution.  Our only business apart from maintaining our website, Facebook group and radio program, was responding to Educators SA new requirement of having one of our members attend at least three out of four of their Council meetings.  With no one wanting to do this, we decided that our best course of action was to withdraw from the association that we had help establish.  We made this decision via an email discussion and subsequently informed Educators SA.  They responded by refunding our membership fee for the year although this money has not appeared in our account and this is being followed up.

We did not offer to run any events in October for UNESCO's Global Media & Information Literacy Week and noted that this appeared to be the case nationally.  We tried to gain some publicity for the event as we have in the past, through the local media.  Despite several versions of letters to the Editor of the Advertiser, none were published.  It would appear that News Corp’s successful, “Let them be Kids” campaign (having contributed to federal government legislation regarding bans to young people having social media accounts) lead them to disregard the need for media literacy.  It could even be suggested that News Corp’s campaign was primarily an economic one — a strategy to curtail their social media competitors who have taken large chunks of their advertising review.  Perhaps they will be more supportive this year.

Leigh Harder from Scotch College, the Chair of ATOM SA emailed me in April “about ways, we might be able to combine efforts around some events and/ or initiatives in the future”.  However while I responded positively to his suggestion of a meeting, I did not hear from him again.

Following up on a comment made in my report last year, I contacted Dana Wortley MP, late in the year.  Dana is a former SAAME member and was a member of the Senate where she chaired a report into children and Cyber-safety in 2010.  She was keen to explore the efforts of our lobbying further.  She is however retiring from parliament which could give her more time to devout to this or she could lose interest.  I'm waiting a response.

As stated earlier, we relied on email, our monthly radio program, our website and our Facebook page for communicating with members. SAAME maintained our Facebook group, MEET (Media Educators Engaging Together) and its membership has increased to 204.  This site is still a useful way to communicate with Media educators and the community at large.  Again Media Moves was broadcasted each month on 5PBA-FM (sponsored by Valley View Secondary School) and I must thank member Linda Belcher for supplying regular movie reviews.  Steven Watt from Picture This! once again supplied us with some free movie passes to give away including Dangerous Animals and Looney Tunes: The Day the Earth Blew Up.

SAAME continues its journey of offering one-to-one support and resources to educators while focusing on our role as a lobby group for more explicit inclusion of Media & Information Literacy programs in our curricula anf the wider community.

Tim ably filled the role of Secretary and being our website master.  I thank him for this.

Finally, thank you to the Executive members of the outgoing committee, for helping yet again maintain the Association during this changing time.