White Australia Policy and Commercial TV Producers

The Underbelly actor said the all-Anglo families of popular dramas like Packed To The Rafters and Neighbours don't reflect "who we are in 2012".

Celebrating the cultural diversity of his latest television role in ABC crime drama The Straits, the Logie Award winner said local TV bosses had to commit to greater cultural diversity on the small screen.

The Straits, created by East West 101 actor Aaron Fa'aoso, is set in the Torres Strait and features a mixed-race family of drug smugglers.

The 28-year-old said the appeal of the "ambitious show was seeing points of difference, different flavours, different cultures".

"There has to be a call for the networks to put on shows with these cultural differences because this is who we are in 2012," he said.

He said dramas such as Channel 7's Rafters and Winners & Losers did not reflect the real racial mix of the nation.

"Those people on Winners & Losers in their floral colours and their pastels ... I don't even know people like this."

"We need to watch ourselves, warts and all; flaws and all.

Finding fame as Kings Cross club baron John Ibrahim, Dirani said he had been swamped with offers to play the same "dodgy crim" roles.

"If these roles are given to you, you've got to take them and then get the creative power to write the series you want to write, to tell the stories you want to express."

In 2008, soap export Neighbours was shamed by UK viewers for being "too white", prompting producers to cast an Asian character, Sunny Lee, for the first time.

But the show's current line-up features entirely Anglo characters.

A spokesman for Equity Australia said the actors' guild had worked with the Screen Producers Association, Live Performance Australia and the ABC "to encourage greater diversity in casting and we hope that this will lead the way for the networks."