Tackling racism 'not a priority' for Govt, says Race Discrimination Commissioner

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It's available now on ABC Listen. About a month ago neo-Nazis brazenly stood out the front of New South Wales Parliament in Sydney.

In September neo-Nazis stormed and damaged the Camp Sovereignty sacred Aboriginal burial ground in Melbourne.

Just this week, the Executive Council of Australian Jury released a report which found more than 1,650 anti-Semitic incidents had occurred over the past 12 months.

And the Australian National Imams Council says Islamophobic incidents have more than doubled since last year.

Australia's Race Discrimination Commissioner says there's never been a more urgent time to act on racism in this country.

And yet, more than 12 months since he delivered a national anti-racism framework to the government, He's yet to hear any response. The Commissioner has decided it's time to speak out.

I'm David Spears from Ngunnawal Country in Canberra. Welcome to Insiders on Background.

Hiri Sivaranam is Australia's Race Discrimination Commissioner. Welcome to you.

Thanks for having me, David, and it's great to be here on the unceded lands of the Yaga and the Turaba people in a very, very sunny Myanjan. It's quite warm it is today.

But before we get to your framework and what's happened to it or not happened to it, how would you describe the nature of racism in Australia right now?

Has it worsened in the time that you've been in this role?

I think it has, unfortunately. And I'll put something to you just at the outset to make it clear.

I've seen that there is now a political party in Australia that is seeking to be formally registered and recognised by the Australian Electoral Commission called the White Australia Party.

So let's just sit with that for a second. That means almost certainly the next election that comes around, people going through their ballot papers are going to see the white Australia Party.

People of colour, people like me and many, many, much more importantly, many others are going to see that. If that isn't a clear indication of how bold and attempting to be mainstream

racism is within our society, I don't know what is.

Just on that point, because this is the group involved in some of those incidents I mentioned, you know, standing out the front of the New South Wales Parliament, they're wanting to register that party name, as you say.

Are you saying that that registration should not be allowed or that we should just be eyes wide open, aware about what's going on here?

We've always got it. We've got to be eyes wide open.
Of course, freedom of political communication is very important and any restriction on such freedom has to be appropriately balanced.

So restrictions on freedom of speech, freedom of political communication, freedom of assembly should only be to the extent necessary to contain the harm that's being

directed towards someone else. The thing we have to try and grapple with is why is it

that we have such a movement that is gaining traction?

What is wrong with our structures and systems that is allowing this

to gain momentum? And why are people, it seems, joining such a movement? And I think that means we have to be open

about some of the systemic failures within our country. Well, what's the answer to that? Why is this happening?

I think it's a multitude of reasons, but I also think that people often have short-term memories.

People think about the racism that's happening at the moment, and you mentioned that in your opening, but what I would say to you is cast your mind back just five years.

During COVID, there was a huge increase in racism, including violence, towards people of Chinese and Asian origin. During the voice referendum, a mainstreaming of racism towards First Peoples.

And then after October 7, 2023, a huge surge in anti-Semitism, anti-Palestinian racism, Islamophobia. And you just quoted some statistics about that.
So the target keeps changing.

And now in the last three months, we've seen propaganda openly attacking Indian migrants. And I've heard of violence towards people of Indian origin.
The target keeps changing. The problem remains.

So is it the Indian Australian community that's the target right now? Are they suffering the worst of it?

I don't know.

I think, I don't want to get into a league table of who's suffering the worst.

I think it's just important to acknowledge that the target keeps changing, but the problem remains. And at the moment, the Indian community feels very vulnerable.

They were identified specifically in the propaganda used in anti-immigration rallies recently.

They've been identified specifically in leaflets that have been distributed by white supremacists across Australia. So unsurprisingly,

that community or some in that community feel pretty vulnerable.

Let's go through a bit bit of a timeline here.

So you were appointed to this role in March last year and the government pretty quickly asked you to produce this national anti-racism framework, which you did.

And you delivered the framework to the government in November last year. You called it the most comprehensive plan ever for eliminating racism in Australia.
Tell us about the framework.

For those who haven't read it, what are some of the key points? The first thing, the really important thing to note is that framework came out of really significant community consultation.

So we had consultations across Australia in remote areas with people of colour, with multicultural communities, but also with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and their communities.

We also consulted with about 300 community organisations. So that framework was based on the experiences of people now.
And what their experiences showed us was that racism is systemic.

That is, it's really easy to think about racism as just an interpersonal thing. So one person saying a slur to someone else.

The problem with that is that then you can just avoid responsibility for change. If you say, Well, I didn't say something racist, I didn't hear something racist being said.

Whereas, if you think about racism as being a systemic issue that affects people in employment, in health, in education, in the justice system, in the media, then you realize until you change the systems, the interpersonal will keep happening.

The systemic

problems give license to the bile of interpersonal racism. So, when we created that framework, it was the first ever whole of government, whole of society roadmap to tackling racism.

It's broad in its scope, it has 63 recommendations. But I mean, if you had if you wanted a plan to tackle sexism in Australia, you wouldn't expect less than 63 recommendations.

So, we know it's broad, but we took that into account because actually, the primary recommendation is to set up a task force with government representatives and others to identify which recommendations to move with as a matter of priority.

And from what I've heard since, there's really strong support for that framework in the community sector, but also outside of that. Just to give you one example,

about two weeks ago, or a couple of weeks ago, I convened with the ACTU and the Jumbana Institute a roundtable on racism at work in Parliament House.

We had unions, we had business, we had community, we had academics, we had government, we had Safe Work Australia. And that roundtable

unanimously passed a resolution that there should be an inquiry into racism at work, systemic and structural racism at work in Australia.

That's just one example of how they are calling for our solution. Well, just on that, and I won't go through all 63 recommendations, but one of them goes to that.

You've recommended the introduction of a positive duty, it's called, under the Racial Discrimination Act, which would require businesses and organisations to have policies and procedures in place to prevent racism.

And you point out it's similar to recent reforms to the Sex Discrimination Act and proposed change to the disability from the Disability Royal Commission into the Disability Discrimination Act.

What would that mean in the workplace, this positive duty that we've heard about in other forms of discrimination, what would it mean when it comes to racial discrimination?

Yeah, the thing to remember, David, is the Race Discrimination Act turned 50 this year.

For 50 years, the burden has been on workers who have, and others, who have been the targets of racism, who are often overwhelmed, under-resourced, to then bring a complaint to try and bring about the change.

After 50 years, we say, Look, it's time to change the obligation and put the onus on employers to take positive measures to eliminate racism rather than waiting for harm to occur.

In a sense, that's a flawed model. You're waiting for the harm to occur, and you're saying, okay, now that you've suffered harm, let's try and bring about change.

Let's change the thinking and go, no, we don't want the harm to occur in the first place. So, what we want is employers to have cultural safety codes of practice, mandatory anti-racism training,

look at proper collection of data on diversity and leadership and what changes might be required. The thing to remember in all of this, though, is this is actually good for business.

There's so much data that shows that more diverse businesses and corporations are more successful.

And in fact, the New Zealand Ecology Commission has put together some data just recently, it was just provided to me a few weeks ago, showing exactly this, that in New Zealand, corporations, businesses that have more diversity, racial diversity, and gender diversity, do better.

And I would say that we wouldn't be that different. So it's actually a win-win.
You take the onus off the worker, you make the employer

do the change, the employer that's got the resource to it, and then the employer benefits, the worker benefits, everyone benefits.

So you provided this framework, you released it publicly in November last year. Have you had any response from the government since then?

Well, the only response I've had so far is from the Attorney General who has said that

she's considering it and will consider it alongside the two envoy reports and a report that we are finalising on racism at university. But that's it.
No commitment to

that. Yeah, we checked in with the Attorney General as well on this and a similar statement.
The government's continuing to carefully consider the recommendations in the framework.

A holistic approach must be taken to ensure the rights and freedoms of all Australians are respected and protected.

And that includes considering the recommendations with respect to the other reports handed down by the Special Envoy to combat anti-Semitism and the Special Envoy to combat Islamophobia, as well as the work you're doing on racism at university.

So, is that a reasonable approach, a response from the government?

Well, it just seems to indicate to me that this is not a priority.

And I think it should be be

because this problem isn't going away.

And you can't deal with it by ignoring it or having social cohesion frameworks or things like that, which kind of don't actually address the problem. I say you've got to name the beast to slate.

You actually have to call out racism. And in fact, we did a desktop audit of all levels of government and their approach to anti-racism work and found that it was very hodgepodge.

There are some some parts of government that don't even want to use the word racism. I think that they might think it's divisive or something.
And I say racism is divisive.

Fighting racism is actually a way of bringing us together.

And you have to confront the issue. And if I'm not really sure what social cohesion means, but if it means that we all want to get along, that's great.

We're not going to get along by pretending racism doesn't exist. We need to make it a priority because it's clearly,

if you look at the sentiment, the way the things that happen online, the way in which brazen open violence, as you alluded to in your opening, is occurring, racist violence is occurring, we've got a problem.

We need to deal with it. So are you saying here, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but are you saying the government's

slow response on this or reluctance to respond so far on this is because it thinks that a response would create more social division?

I'm not sure. That's the thing, because I haven't, it's not been clear to me.

What I am saying, and I'm happy to say, is that I don't think it's a priority at the moment.

I mean, it can't be if there hasn't been a response for a year, but I hope that they'll make it a priority.

And does that frustrate you? Does that frustrate you, Gary?

It's look, it frustrates the communities that I engage with.

And I know, for example, I think last week, 57 community organisations wrote to the government asking them to, and we're not talking small organisations, we're talking big ones like ACOS, FECA, and others, Federation of Ethnic Communities, Council Australia, and others, the Refugee Council of Australia, who said you need to act on this.

I do so much community engagement. I think I tallied it up in my diary, and I've probably had 140, 150 engagements since I've started, so in a year and 10 months.
So that's a lot.

And the issue of racism just keeps coming up again and again. And people often come up to me and go, oh, I'm so glad you're talking about this.
It's really hard.

People seem to pretend it doesn't exist. They seem to think that they don't understand why I had to change my name so that I could get a job interview or how it wasn't safe for me at work.

There was nowhere safe to pray or I couldn't take leave for a cultural reason or I didn't get promoted because I wasn't the right cultural fit.

They just don't seem to understand the problems that me and my family go through, the systemic issues which are stopping us from fully participating and thriving. So

I think for me, if you want a society where people can be themselves and thrive and prosper, you have to tackle racism. Look, a final issue I'm just keen to get your thoughts on.

The immigration debate, the coalition is set to unveil new immigration policy principles next week.

There is some talk of new values tests for visa holders, not just those becoming a citizen, and an effort to bring immigration numbers down, clearly.

Are you comfortable with how this debate's playing out so far on the Coalition side?

I'm not comfortable generally with the way this debate's been playing out.

I think that, unfortunately, there has been on all sides of politics over the last year and particularly before the last election attacks on immigration or comments made about immigration that are blaming immigrants for problems that are far more complex.

If we have economic inequality in this country, the cause of that is not immigration.

As an example, Treasury released modelling about three years ago that showed that permanent migrants contribute more, much more, to the economy than they take.

So it's a net positive, a strong net positive. So this notion that migrants are taking from others, it's ridiculous, it's wrong.

Yet we have this mis and disinformation that gets promoted that says, oh, it's migrants are the reason why you can't buy a house or the cost of petrol's gone up or there's traffic congestion, which is just wrong.

But then what happens is it leads to that misleading information leads to racism.

Because often the only signal as to whether someone is a migrant is the color of their skin or their name or their accent.

So,

my frustration, I think, is

there's nothing wrong with having a debate about migration

and it's an issue, it's a policy issue.

But let's have an informed, honest one where if we're talking about economic problems, we actually genuinely look at the causes of those problems and have courageous solutions rather than scapegoating migrants, which is what leads to racism.

I mean, you've pointed to that data on the economic gains, but is it legitimate to debate immigration numbers levels, but also the impact that that level has on infrastructure, what capacity Australia has for various levels of immigration?

Again, like I said, there's nothing wrong with having a discussion about immigration, and part of that would be a discussion about the impact of immigration on a variety of things.

But don't just do that in isolation. Do that in conjunction with a discussion and analysis on everything else that might contribute to.

For example, if you're going to talk about housing supply, well, talk about how many empty apartments there are that aren't getting rented. Talk about the cost of building supplies.

Talk about interest rates.

Talk about everything rather than just saying, oh, well, we're just going to talk about migration and nothing else, because that ends up demonizing migrants or dehumanising migrants rather than and not coming up with solutions that actually fix the problem.

Well, Giri Sivaraman, we'll be interested to see when and how the government does respond to your framework. We really appreciate you joining us today.
Thank you.

Thanks for having me, David. And if you have any thoughts on this conversation, do drop us a line, insiders at abc.net.au, and we'll be back on Sunday.

I hope you can join us for Insiders 9am on ABC TV.

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