Multilingual Parliament TV: Enhancing inclusiveness in Fiji
The establishment of multilingual broadcasting in the Parliament of Fiji is a good example of how parliaments can reach new audiences and broaden their inclusiveness. It shows how a relatively small IT operation with limited capabilities can achieve results through a combination of inter-parliamentary learning, continuous leadership engagement and an agile approach to implementation.
What is Parliament TV?
Parliament TV is the TV channel of the Parliament of Fiji. It carries live and recorded broadcasts of plenary proceedings and committee meetings, including public hearings and scrutiny sessions. It is freely available via the Walesi digital TV box and app. Content is also streamed through parliament’s Facebook channel and website.
How did it begin?
When parliament reconvened in 2014, the government established a framework for broadcasting parliamentary proceedings, which was carried out by the Fijian Broadcasting Corporation, a state-owned company. This changed in 2019, when Parliament TV was launched, maintaining parliament’s independence and increasing transparency and openness. This significant upgrade was co-funded by parliament and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Pacific Office in Fiji. For the first time, Parliament TV carried broadcasts of committee proceedings. A further upgrade was made during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the broadcast of hybrid and virtual committee and plenary sessions.
How was inclusiveness rolled out?
Parliament’s inclusiveness strategy emerged from the country’s constitutional commitment to equality and representation, which established English, Fijian and Fiji Hindi as official languages. Parliament recognized the need to make proceedings accessible to all citizens, regardless of their primary language or communication needs, and formalized this commitment in its strategic plan. The multilingual broadcasting initiative is a cornerstone of this broader strategy, which also encompasses physical accessibility improvements, community outreach programmes and digital engagement efforts – all designed to strengthen democratic participation across the country’s diverse and geographically dispersed population.
Since 2023, MPs have been able to speak in any of the three official languages. Initially, Parliament TV only broadcast the English-language audio feed, with the Fijian and Fiji Hindi feeds coming from the interpreters. Since then, new inclusiveness features have been gradually rolled out. The first addition was Fijian Sign Language interpretation, which is now provided continuously during broadcasts.
As of 2025, automatic speech recognition (ASR) is now used to broadcast the original audio with the addition of English captions. The introduction of ASR has also delivered additional benefits for parliament, including for Hansard reporters, who are able to use it for initial transcription.
What is behind the success and what can other parliaments learn?
There are a number of key factors behind the success of the Parliament TV project in Fiji:
- Driving innovation from the top: Since access to parliamentary sittings and proceedings is now mandated in the updated constitution, the Speaker has a responsibility to ensure access, transparency and inclusivity. Because of this, Parliament TV is a political priority. While UNDP initially supported the project, subsequent innovation and expansion has been driven from within parliament. The parliamentary leadership, from the Secretary General down, has shown a firm commitment to, and high engagement with, the project, while effective and ongoing dialogue between leadership and the IT department has underpinned an innovative approach to supporting the political goals for inclusiveness.
- Learning from other parliaments: Knowledge transfer has been important at all levels of parliament, not just within the IT department. The Secretary General leads an active culture of research and learning about innovations in other parliaments, with these ideas being shared across the institution. The vendors for this project were selected on the basis of previous experience with the House of Representatives of New Zealand, complementing the vision of the Parliament of Fiji to provide multilingual content.
- Scaling technology appropriate for parliament: Initially, parliament lacked the technical capacity to establish a parliamentary TV platform. Bringing in external support helped parliament envision, plan and scale the solution to its “absorption capacity”. Parliament could have easily chosen more advanced solutions, but instead chose the ones that could be supported given its internal skills and resource capacity.
- Achieving a lot through external vendors: Since parliament’s own technical team is relatively small (less than 10 IT staff), projects are delivered through external vendors. Crucially, parliament manages the support and deliverables provided by these vendors – an approach applied to the delivery of the Parliament TV infrastructure and the ASR capability. Parliament’s IT management describes this approach as follows: “We don’t know everything and we bring in what we need and then gradually make it our own”. This is very much in line with good practices in digital broadcasting.
Plans for the future
Looking ahead, the Parliament of Fiji is planning to provide live coverage, with the same multilingual features, for upcoming committee consultations taking place outside parliament (in rural areas and the outer islands) in order bring people closer to parliamentary business. The Parliament of Fiji is happy to share its experience and lessons learned with other Pacific parliaments that are keen to establish their own multilingual broadcasting capabilities, notably via the CIP Pacific Regional Hub.
