He was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia on 26 January 2016 for significant service to the literary arts as an author and publisher, to the television industry as a producer, and to tertiary education.

He is nowadays best known in Australia as a Gallipoli Campaign historian and specialist in Turkish, Anatolian, and Eastern Mediterranean history and culture.

Arthur and Alice passed on their joint love of and aptitude for music to young Harvey and his younger sister, Carole Lesley (born in 1950).

Broadbent attended Poundswick Grammar School in south Manchester from 1958 to 1964, where he developed his interest in music, drama, literature and history.

Here they worked at the Turkish Education Society's (TED) Zonguldak Koleji until 1969, when Harvey's father Arthur died suddenly of a heart attack back in Manchester at the age of 52.

Then in January 1975 the family migrated to Australia, where Harvey taught English and drama for a year at Camden High School in New South Wales.

Other radio features include: Gallipoli Voices, (poems composed at and about Gallipoli), a production of Australian poet, Michael Connolly's Kembla Voices, about the 1902 Mr Kembla mine explosion, and the serialised Fruits of our Labour by Karen Burton, which documented the life of itinerant fruit pickers in Queensland.

Since 1999 as an independent producer and writer he created sound features and documentaries for ABC Classic FM and Radio National such as Gallipoli Voices, Listening to Istanbul, World Street, Dervish, Encountering Damascus, Listening to Manchester, The Poetry of Sufism, A Bridge in Your Ear (celebration of the Sydney Harbour Bridge), Travellers not Tourists (about cultural tourism), Gallipoli Pilgrimage, Minstrels of War (2007) and The Mystical Muse (2008) In 2016, awarded the Australian national honour of Member of the Order of Australia.

He has travelled extensively in Turkey and the Eastern Mediterranean over many years, leading tours and making documentary films.