Racism in Australia: Is Denial Still Plausible?

Author(s): Conrad Gershevitch

Source: Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts, Vol. 3, No. 2, Special Issue: Human
Rights, Social Justice, and the Impact of Race (Spring 2010), pp. 229-250
Published by: Indiana University Press
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Racism in Australia:
Is Denial Still Plausible?

Conrad Gershevitch
Director, Race and Cultural Diversity Unit,
Australian Human Rights Commission

With Assistance from Amy Lamoin

and Cassandra Dawes

A ustralia continues to have a complex relationship

with the notion of racism. The country is still am-
bivalent about ethnicity. Significant parts of the
Australian population are largely, and worryingly, unaware
and disconnected from any core understanding of human
rights. Australia has experienced public-policy complacency
around measures to support cultural diversity, multicultural-
ism, and intercultural dialogue—the very substance of what
shifts us toward a stable and sophisticated democracy with a
firmer, more mature national identity. On the other hand, Aus-
tralia is a free, democratic, and plural society. It has a devel-
oped economy largely integrated into processes of globaliza-
tion. It is also a nation, generally, of peaceful and safe commu-
nities where people from multiple cultures, races, and faiths
coexist in relative harmony.
What does this make contemporary Australia other than a
paradox? In this short paper we look at Australia’s history of
race relations and attempt to explain the state-of-affairs of rac-
ism, cultural diversity, and human rights; we will offer some
suggestions as to why Australia has been getting away with
moral and political indolence on these issues, as well as sound
some warnings about the future.

Racism in Australia Defined

At the outset we should endeavor to define racism in the
Australian context, a rather challenging task because (unlike
in the United States) a public discourse about race—or rather
a deliberate avoidance of such a public discourse—is virtually
a cultural trait: Australians just do not like talking about or ac-

© 2010 The Ohio State University/Office

spring 2010  229
of Minority Affairs/The Kirwan Institute
 conrad gershevitch

knowledging racism. In defining racism we need to look at the

normative definition (the definition provided in law) as well as
the working definition, or the use of the word by people who
have to combat racism on a daily basis.
The easiest way to understand racism is to look at how it
is defined in the Race Discrimination Act (RDA 1975) which
brings into effect Australia’s obligations as a state party to the
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Racial Discrimination (CERD 1965). The RDA, passed in the
dying months of the reformist Whitlam Labor government
(1972–1975), was the first real attempt to address systemic rac-
ism in Australia through penalties. Before this time any legisla-
tion that addressed race was designed to protect racism rather
than prosecute it. The RDA mirrors the human rights treaty
promulgated by the United Nations and defines racism as “any
act involving a distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference
based on race, color, descent or national or ethnic origin which
has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recogni-
tion, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of any human
right or fundamental freedom in the political, economic, social,
cultural or any other field of public life” (section 9 [1]).
This definition treats racism in eugenic terms. That is, it sees
racial distinctions as being primarily based on physiognomy or
appearance, not upon other determinants of differences such
as culture or religion (and certainly this is the way that the law
has been interpreted in Australia). In this sense, the definition
is dated: it may account for one of the reasons why the RDA
is generally underutilized by the Australian public and why
the Australian Human Rights Commission receives few com-
plaints on the grounds of race.
Racism today involves, generally, a more slippery and subtle
process. It can be supremely nuanced. While old-fashioned big-
otry continues to show its head from time to time, for example,
through social networking sites or in rare drunken outburst in
groups of youths, most Australians behave in racist ways un-
consciously or surreptitiously. Antisemitism and Islamophobia
are just two examples of the ways visibly different groups may
face discrimination. Exclusion may occur with purportedly
good excuses such as refusal to employ somebody because
of poor English language competency even when good skills
in this area are not a job requirement. But the most common
form of racism is what could be described as “xeno-racism”: a
term used by Fekete to describe a kind of racism toward other-
ness, toward the different outsider who is not seen to belong or
could be a potential threat (Fekete and Sivanandan 2009, 19).
Racism in twenty-first century Australia, like racism in many
parts of the world, has therefore morphed into a complex pat-
tern of dislike based on a range of qualifications around differ-
ence (Mansouri et al. 2009, 12).
To understand the fraught status of racism and ethnicity,
it is necessary to understand the history of Australia. This is
impossible to do with justice in only a few pages, but we will

race /ethnicity vol. 3 / no. 2  230

racism in australia: is denial still plausible?

attempt to explain some of the fundamental issues about race

that have punctuated Australia’s post-settlement history.

A Checkered Post-Settlement History:

Relations with Australia’s Indigenous Peoples
The story of human habitation of the Australasian continent
can be divided into two parts. The first is a long history that
cannot be accurately determined. Some scholars have argued
that humans first colonized the area 60,000 years ago; others
estimate 40,000 years. What is not disputed is that Indigenous
Australians have maintained the oldest surviving, unbroken
culture in the world. This unique culture has formed around
the extraordinary ecology of the Australian terrain: vast, arid,
and hot, but also a landscape with large tracts of fertile, for-
ested land, as well as regions that are quite wet and cold. It
is an ecology where fire (despite its destructive potential) is
also a necessary process of environmental
renewal. The culture of Indigenous Austra- The culture of Indigenous Australians,
lians, however long one dates their habita- however long one dates their habitation, is
tion, is defined by their distinct relationship
defined by their distinct relationship with
with the distinct Australian ecology that is,
simultaneously, highly diverse, complex, the distinct Australian ecology that is, si-
harsh, and yet fragile. It is now understood multaneously, highly diverse, complex,
that these subsistence cultures were varied harsh, and yet fragile.
and sophisticated, even though to the eyes
of the earliest European explorers and settlers the native inhab-
itants were often described as “savages” (Evans 2008).
Some archaeologists believe that intercultural contact be-
tween Indigenous Australians and those living in nearby coun-
tries (notably what is now the Indonesian archipelago and
Papua New Guinea) existed for millennia before the earliest
European explorers began to chart the Australian coast by the
early seventeenth century (Bowdler 2002, 167). It was not until
1770, when Captain James Cook charted the east coast of Aus-
tralia, that a largely intact map of the continent was compiled
(Suárez 2004, 132). This project effectively ended the problem
of terra incognita, and completed the mappa mundi: the great
southern land (which had been imaged for many centuries as
logically existing) was now proven to be, and was given a place
on global maps—but it took a long time, and the loss of many
lives, to understand the nature of this harsh and unusual conti-
nent. In 1788, the English established a colony on the land still
known as New Holland. Largely founded as a penal settlement
to help rid the English courts of its vast population of convicted
petty criminals, Australia was rapidly colonized by free settlers
eager to seek their fortunes in this new world.
Two aspects about the early settlement are worth noting.
First, settlers were not monocultural; the myth that they were
was promulgated later. The First Fleet (as the flotilla of boats
that brought the first settlers to Australia was called) contained
a variety of people of different races and faiths, although

spring 2010  231

 conrad gershevitch

the majority were “Anglo-Celtic” Londoners (Egan 1999, 20).

Second, early reports described the local Indigenous peoples
as “manly” and they were romanticized as “noble savages”
(Broome 2002, 29). The first governor of the colony, Arthur
Phillip, generally treated the local Indigenous community with
respect and attempted to maintain a form of justice and equity
that treated both settlers and natives equally. It has also been
argued that Governor Phillip was just following orders from
Britain to treat the natives well and at times there was a sepa-
rate system of law for Aboriginals that included punitive expe-
ditions (Jupp 2001, 116).
The basis of colonization was one of terra nullius, or the no-
tion that the land was not inhabited or had no owner. This
position is still hotly contested today; native title continues to
be claimed through the courts, while many Indigenous rights
campaigners argue that that they were invaded rather than col-
onized. Despite its relatively constructive debut, Indigenous–
settler relations quickly degenerated. From the time of the first
colonies through to the late twentieth century, the experience
of Indigenous relations—and hence the race relations between
black and white Australians—has been essentially one of op-
pression, dispossession, and genocide.
Kevin Rudd, the prime minister of Australia, delivered the
Apology to the Stolen Generations in February 2008. He apolo-
gized on behalf of the Commonwealth Parliament for decades
of national policies that led to the enforced removal of Indige-
nous children from their families and their fostering into (often
abusive) non-Indigenous families (Rudd 2008). In an instant, af-
fected (that is, “stolen”) Aboriginal children lost connection to
country (which is at the heart of Aboriginal well-being), their
families, and communities. This was a deliberate program of
cultural genocide, as well as a form of racial genocide (out-
breeding by stealth). Over time, many of the “taken-away-
kids” lost connection to their Aboriginality, their stories, their
languages, and their cultural practice. This issue continues to be
one of prolonged, radical trauma as well as moral outrage that
convulses many within Indigenous communities. John Howard,
the immediate past prime minister, had refused to apologize
on behalf of the Australian people for these historic policies of
forcible removal of Indigenous children. Kevin Rudd’s elec-
tion platform in 2007 included issuing a formal apology to the
Stolen Generations, a promise he fulfilled within three months
of winning office. When delivered, the Apology was met with
enormous emotion by many within Indigenous communities as
a watershed in modern Australian history.

Case Study 1: The Northern Territory Intervention

Indigenous issues pertaining to racism persist. There is a
view that racism is not persisting just within certain groups
or individuals within the community but is entrenched in the
thinking and behavior of governments and the public service.

race /ethnicity vol. 3 / no. 2  232

racism in australia: is denial still plausible?

This, it has been argued, has been illustrated by what is known

as the Northern Territory Intervention, which in 2007, among
other contentious actions, suspended the Race Discrimination
Act (1975) in the territory covering seventy-three prescribed
Aboriginal communities.
The Intervention was sparked by the Little Children are
Sacred Report that identified serious and persistent child sex
abuse and child protection issues in Aboriginal communities in
the Northern Territory (Northern Territory Government 2007).
The report, in fact, made the same claims and reached the
same conclusions that had been documented earlier by two-
dozen related reports. The Howard government announced an
emergency (which came to be known as the Northern Terri-
tory Emergency Response, or NTER) and arranged a front-end
Australian Army presence in Alice Springs.
Four key issues are worth noting about this situation. First,
how can it reasonably be argued that the rights of children can
be better protected by suspending important human rights pro-
tections such as the RDA? Second, the child protection issues in
the Northern Territory were certainly serious but did not for-
mally meet the criteria of an emergency as defined under the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Article 4)
(ICCPR 1966). Third, the serious child protection and broader
social issues in the Northern Territory did not emerge suddenly
but were the result of long-term government underinvestment
in social and support services in the Northern Territory. Some
Aboriginal communities had struggled, day-by-day, with
chronic social and community issues for decades before the
Howard government decided to call it an emergency (Steering
Committee for the Review of Government Service Provision
2007, 524). Finally, the decision to install an army presence to
help enforce the emergency response was a peculiar, almost
startling response to long-standing, chronic community issues.
This decision, in a country such as Australia, warrants serious
discussion.
There were a series of measures rolled out under the NTER.
What is of particular importance is that these measures were
implemented without any community consultation: discus-
sion with the affected communities was entirely absent from
the decision-making process (Social Justice
Commissioner 2007, 199–221). There were
There was no recognition of the hard-
no conversations with community leaders learned fact that Aboriginal communities
about community needs or community- are diverse and that policy solutions need
based solutions. No dialogue attempted to to be inherently respectful of, and designed
understand what kind of future the com-
munities were hoping to build. There was around, this diversity.
no recognition of the hard-learned fact that Aboriginal com-
munities are diverse and that policy solutions need to be inher-
ently respectful of, and designed around, this diversity (Davis
2009, 11–14).
Another feature of the emergency response was a series of
income management programs that quarantined the welfare

spring 2010  233

 conrad gershevitch

payments of Aboriginal people in the seventy-three prescribed

communities. It quarantined these payments for essential items
such as food, health care, and rent (Brough 2007). In 2009, an
independent review board found that the income management
programs have had a mixed response (NTER Review Board
2008, 1–44). While some communities have found the measures
helpful because they seemed to assist in reducing substance
abuse and levels of community violence, other communities
have reported that the measures have not been useful, are not
sustainable, have not built capacity, and have infantilized and
shamed Aboriginal communities. Since the Rudd government
was elected, it has promised to reinstate the protections of the
RDA and there have been recent developments in this regard
(Australian Government 2009, 1–37). This is a welcome devel-
opment, as is the consultative approach the government has
taken to the future of the emergency response in the Northern
Territory. It is tempting to get lost in the detail since public
policy has (at best) traditionally failed and (at worst) harmed
Aboriginal Australians. The temptation to focus on the minutia
of policy responses is now particularly strong given that the
Northern Territory income management models may be rolled
out nationally as part of broader welfare reform. Nevertheless,
it is critical to remain focused on the underpinning philosophy:
genuinely resetting the relationship between Indigenous and
non-Indigenous Australians.

Another Challenge in Australia’s Post-

Settlement History: Managing Pluralism
In very brief terms, we have outlined one aspect of Aus-
tralia’s checkered race-relations past. Another aspect relates
to race hate directed to racial outsiders, especially those from
Australia’s immediate regional neighbors. Much of Australia’s
history during the nineteenth century showed slow growth.
This occurred primarily through immigration from the United
Kingdom, through continuing transportation of convicts as
well as free settlers, especially pastoralists eager to grab mas-
sive land concessions. Periods of expansion and boom, such as
the gold rush of the 1850s, attracted immigrants from closer
regions, notably from China (Jupp 2001, 35). In other periods
during the century different groups arrived (such as Afghan
cameleers, Japanese pearl fishers, and Pacific Islander sugar
cane workers), but always in relatively small numbers (ibid.,
164). At times the local white reaction to the appearance of
these others arriving in the colonies was violent.
After some decades of negotiations and argument, Australia
was declared an independent country in 1901. This declaration
was somewhat conditional since Australia’s founding fathers
had no interest in establishing a republic. Indeed, Australia
continued to maintain (and some say continues to maintain)
a mendicant attitude toward England as the mother country.
Australian troops fighting in the Great War of 1914–1918 often

race /ethnicity vol. 3 / no. 2  234

racism in australia: is denial still plausible?

asked their English allies about “home.” When Neville Cham-

berlain declared war on Germany in 1939 as a response to Ger-
many’s invasion of Poland, Australia also declared war within
hours of England’s response. The umbilical cord connecting the
Australian Commonwealth to Britain remained intact (Madden
and Humphreys Morris-Jones 1980, 91).
Given these psychological, institutional, and cultural links,
Australia’s Constitution preserved the nation as a constitu-
tional monarchy with the head of state (the
Governor-General) appointed by the Eng- Australia’s Constitution, unlike that of the
lish sovereign, a technical fact that persists United States, is not particularly inter-
to this day. Australia’s Constitution, unlike ested in the freedoms of the common man
that of the United States, is not particularly or the pursuit of happiness.
interested in the freedoms of the common
man or the pursuit of happiness. Perhaps our convict past was
still too much a dominant shadow in the minds of its drafters.
But an immediate and pragmatic concern of the Constitution’s
authors was to ensure that the rather fractious colonies (future
states within the Commonwealth of Australia) would cooper-
ate in a manner that would maintain the integrity of the new
nation. Thus, the Constitution is more concerned with such
contentious notions as state rights, as well as grudging rights
that reflected recent freedoms, such as the right to own pri-
vate property, or to move within the commonwealth without
constraint. Some clauses within the Constitution, however, not
only fail the human rights aspirations of a nation’s founding
document, but include specific clauses that are racist, notably
relating to the disqualification from voting of “all persons of
any race” (section 25), and the granting to Parliament (section
51.xxvi) the power to make specific laws on racial grounds if it
so chooses (The Constitution 1900; Williams 2009). The newly
formed nation’s inclusion of these clauses reflects the persis-
tent fear of the racial other; not just Indigenous Australians,
but of the impending “yellow hordes” that were often seen as
a sword of Damocles overhanging Australia’s white, Christian
integrity.
Of course, the time at which the Constitution was drafted
predated the notion of human rights, but many of the rights
that were protected in other democratic constitutions are not in-
cluded in that of Australia. This has not yet been rectified either
through subsequent amendment of the Constitution or through
a legislated charter of rights as has, for instance, occurred in the
United Kingdom and New Zealand. Indeed, Australia contin-
ues to be the only democracy in the world that does not have
such protections: a persistent failure that is of concern to many
human rights advocates.
One of the first laws passed by the newly formed Common-
wealth Parliament of Australia demonstrated various appre-
hensions that plagued the minds of the nation’s founders. This
law, the Immigration Restriction Act (1901), was a disguised yet
deliberate attempt to curtail the undesirable other (that is the
racially undesirable other) from populating the new country.

spring 2010  235

 conrad gershevitch

While the act did not exclude any race specifically, as this was
discouraged by Britain, it did allow the government to deport
any person who “when asked to do so by an officer fail(ed) to
write out at dictation . . . a passage of 50 words in length in
a European language directed by the officer.” This test could
be given to any immigrant during their first year in Australia
and only forty-six people passed the test in 1902–1903, despite
the fact that it was administered 805 times (Immigration Re-
striction Act 1901 [Cth]). The act also spe-
The paradox of Australia was already be- cifically excluded manual laborers from en-
coming apparent by the early days of the tering Australia except when exempted by
new nation. As has been illustrated, rac- the minister for holding a special skill. Ap-
plication of this law was generally known
ism and exclusion were rife and the new as the “White Australia Policy”; it was a
citizens were not particularly interested in law that was maintained until 1973, and
protecting their rights constitutionally. was amended when it was recognized that
Australia had evolved into a country where
racial exclusion could no longer be sustained through deliber-
ately racist Commonwealth laws.
The paradox of Australia was already becoming apparent
by the early days of the new nation. As has been illustrated,
racism and exclusion were rife and the new citizens were not
particularly interested in protecting their rights constitution-
ally. Nevertheless, Australia was the second nation to extend
the franchise to women (Oldfield 1992, 14). It had a highly ac-
tive union and workers’ rights history when the country was
convulsed with strikes throughout the 1890s (Trainor 1994,
135–39). This mood of egalitarianism, perhaps partially built
by the colonial, enterprising mentality, followed practical steps
in terms of rights. In Australia, the Harvester decision of 1907
established the principle of the basic or minimum wage. This
guaranteed workers (meaning males) a standard of living con-
sidered necessary for them and their family to live decently in
a civilized society. This decision of the Commonwealth Court
of Conciliation and Arbitration had international implications
for labor conditions, and set the standard until the 1990s for
decent remuneration for work (Thompson 1994, 165). Like
much of Australia’s progress, it was maintained more through
mutual agreement and consensus rather than through specific
legislation.

Progress and Retrenchment :

The Post-World War II Era
Attempts to keep Australia “white” began to unravel in the
post-World War II era. As a vast continent with a tiny popula-
tion, the country had been at particular risk of invasion by the
Japanese Imperial Army. The feeling in the period immediately
following the war was that Australia would need to “populate
or perish,” although this plea was first made by Prime Minis-
ter Billy Hughes in 1935 (Burnley, Murphy, and Fagan 1997,
13). Large numbers of European immigrants began to flow into

race /ethnicity vol. 3 / no. 2  236

racism in australia: is denial still plausible?

Australia from the mid-1940s. Incrementally, as hundreds of

thousands of migrants from central Europe and the northern
Mediterranean rim came into the country, the profile of the
Australian population began to shift. And with this shift came
the gradual realization that Australia was changing as a na-
tion, too.
Mass immigration of non-English subjects was a novel expe-
rience for Australia. In the early years it was assumed that new
settlers would be assimilated into the wider Anglo-Australian
culture and society—and assimilationism continues to be a
worrying discourse in Australian immigration debates. Social
change does not always occur quickly, and when it does, the
public policy responses to such changing realities often involve
considerable lags. The birth of multiculturalism occurred long
after the inflows of migrants began to reshape Australia’s so-
cial and cultural landscape radically. It was not until the mid-
1970s that a discourse about multiculturalism was introduced,
particularly through the efforts of Al Grassby, the immigration
minister in the first term of the (center-left) Labor Party govern-
ment led by Gough Whitlam (Greig, Lewins, and White 2003,
114). But it was not for another ten years, during the tenure
of the Fraser government (the leader of the more conservative
Liberal Party), that multiculturalism was given a firm policy
base and infrastructure (Wesley 2000, 186).
Following the release of The Review of Post Arrival Programs
and Services for Migrants (Galbally 1978), the then-government
introduced a range of programs based upon a set of principles
that are still important today. These principles include equality
of opportunity of all members of society to realize their poten-
tial and to access services, to be able to maintain culture while
understanding the culture of others, and the need for commu-
nity engagement and self-reliance (Jupp 2007, 85). In the years
following the report, new programs were included in Austra-
lia’s settlement services. Among these were migrant resource
centers (and later torture and trauma rehabilitation services)
to help immigrants access mainstream services and opportuni-
ties needed to participate in the economic and social life of the
community. The Translation and Interpreting Service (TIS) Na-
tional was introduced and a national electronic media corpo-
ration was established: the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS),
which continues to broadcast world news, films, documenta-
ries, and serialized programs in dozens of languages over its
television network. SBS radio provides dedicated language
broadcasts over several frequencies, and the number of hours
per week these are broadcast depends on the demographic of
that language use in Australia. Since that time, there have also
been commitments to multicultural policies at the national and
state and territory government levels.
At the national level, commitment to multiculturalism was
strong under both the Liberal Fraser government and the Labor
Hawke/Keating governments. However, the situation began to
change by the mid-1990s. As early as 1988, a report into Austra-

spring 2010  237

 conrad gershevitch

lian attitudes toward multiculturalism demonstrated strong re-

sistance, with research indicating a widespread perception that
recently arrived “outsiders” were rapidly changing Australian
society (Fitzgerald 1988). This coincided with a period of rapid
economic change. Labor market reform, the
It was easy to accuse “the other” of taking internationalization of the economy (which
jobs and getting the benefits that should led to the floating of the Australian dollar
only be available for real (“old”) Austra- in the early 1980s), macroeconomic changes
(such as deregulation of banking), and a
lians. The time was ripe for an anti-multi- whole-of-government competition policy
cultural backlash. occurred at the same time as global eco-
nomic downturns. For many, this was too much too soon: inter-
est rates increased, unemployment levels rose, and many Aus-
tralians blamed immigrants. It was easy to accuse “the other”
of taking jobs and getting the benefits that should only be avail-
able for real (“old”) Australians (ibid.). The time was ripe for an
anti-multicultural backlash.

Static Energy: Ambivalence and Procrastination

in Contemporary Race Relations
The year 1996 was something of a watershed for Australian
race relations. Not only was there a return to a Liberal govern-
ment, but it was led by John Howard. Howard had been the
treasurer in the closing months of the previous Liberal gov-
ernment, but a very different conservative to Fraser and one
avowedly opposed to multiculturalism. A few years earlier,
Howard had publicly played the “race card” against Asian im-
migrants (Markus 2001, 88). In 1988, when he was the Leader
of the Opposition, he had called for Asian immigration to be
slowed because of its impact upon Australian society (Mad-
dox 2005, 113–14). Howard’s race rhetoric at this time was a
contributing factor that cost him the leadership of the Liberal
Party. It would be several years before he was able to reclaim
this title; thereafter, he discussed issues that related to race and
cultural diversity in far more carefully worded terms.
Confusing the scene at the time of the 1996 election, how-
ever, was one new aspiring Member of Parliament: Pauline
Han­son. Hanson had been a Liberal-endorsed candidate in a
bellwether southern Queensland electorate in the lead-up to
the 1996 campaign. She was, however, disendorsed just prior to
th epoll because her overtly racist comments were causing em-
barrassment to the party (Brett 2003, 191–92). Once she lost her
party’s support, she promptly established her own One Nation
political organization, managing to surprise both major parties
by winning her seat in the election. In her maiden speech in
Federal Parliament she voiced in confused, inarticulate, and
drawling accents her manifesto of fear and dislike for immi-
grants and Indigenous Australians.
To the astonishment and concern of both the conservative
and progressive arms of the Australian public as well as the
educated middle classes, Hanson’s popularity soared—up to a

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racism in australia: is denial still plausible?

point (ibid., 193). Hanson’s very inarticulateness seemed to be

an attraction to a certain voting demographic: she epitomized
what many voters wanted to see in politics—a rough honesty
and a voice for the common folk that was not heard at the de-
cision-making policy tables. All societies have their marginal
voters, those who feel excluded from the affluence, influence,
or education of the rest of society. In Australia, these votes
usually represent under 10 percent of eligible voters (Markus
2009, 31–32; Grant and Sorensen 2000, 206). The most negative
attitudes toward cultural diversity tend to come from older,
Australian-born residents who live in areas with high concen-
trations of immigrants (Markus 2009, 31–32). Those with lower
levels of education are also more likely to subscribe to racist
attitudes (Dunn et al. 2004, 420–21). The votes of One Nation at
the 1998 election were predominately male, rural, 45–64 years
old, and manual laborers (Bean and McAllister 2000, 178–79).
Rating issues on a scale of one to one hundred, One Nation
voters rated most campaign issues at approximately the same
level as the general voting population (e.g., unemployment and
taxes). The only issue for which Hanson’s supporters displayed
a marked difference in opinion was immigration: all voters
rated it fifty-one, whereas One Nation voters rated it seventy-
nine (ibid., 187).
These small numbers of voters are not enough to ensure a
political party’s representation in Parliament unless the votes
are heavily concentrated in small pockets, as is the case for the
National Party, which holds several seats in
Parliament because their voting block is re- Therefore, under certain voting conditions,
stricted to a limited number of rural elector- relatively small voting blocs can make sub-
ates. However, under Australia’s system of stantial differences to electoral outcomes.
preferential voting (a member of Parliament
must win 50 percent of votes, once prefer- By swinging preferences in a swathe of
ences are distributed, plus one), voters can marginal and closely contested seats, elec-
provide, effectively, a second vote to a sec- toral predictability and party campaigns
ond candidate. Therefore, under certain become very uncertain.
voting conditions, relatively small voting
blocs can make substantial differences to electoral outcomes.
By swinging preferences in a swathe of marginal and closely
contested seats, electoral predictability and party campaigns
become very uncertain.
The rise of Hanson and her One Nation party seemed to put
the conservative Howard government in an unwinnable po-
sition going into the 2001 election, with the One Nation vote
splitting both ways across the political spectrum (ibid., 182).
However, in the months leading to this election two events
occurred that changed Australian history, destroyed One Na-
tion, and for many marked a turning point for which the How-
ard government could never be forgiven for its crimes against
human rights standards and for its use of race to incite fear and
hate.
Before 2001, John Howard had already managed to upset
many in the Indigenous community. At the Australian Recon-

spring 2010  239

 conrad gershevitch

ciliation Convention on May 27, 1997, many of the Indigenous

audience were so offended by his referral to the dispossession of
Aboriginal people as a “blemish” on Australia’s proud history
and his declaration that “Australians of this generation should
not be required to accept guilt and blame for past actions and
policies,” that they stood and turned their backs on him (Err-
ington and Van Onselen 2007, 263). But it was in August 2001
when a Norwegian tanker, the Tampa, sailed into Australian
waters that a new level of race-based tensions evolved.
The Tampa had rescued 433 asylum seekers from a boat that
had been sinking in the Indian Ocean. Most of these asylum
seekers were fleeing from persecution in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Following the laws of the sea, the Tampa attempted to make its
way to Christmas Island, a remote Australian territory with ref-
ugee-processing facilities, to deliver its human cargo. Howard
seized upon this opportunity to play upon an uneasy popula-
tion by claiming that tough border protection was necessary to
maintain Australia’s territorial integrity (Marr and Wilkinson
2003, 97). At almost the same time, the events of 9/11 unfolded,
further playing into the hands of the government. Two events
only days apart provided enormous potential political mileage
for the hitherto beleaguered government.
Defense Minister Peter Reith implied that asylum seekers
might be sleeper terrorists (Fear 2007, 27) and that asylum-
seeker policy was linked to national and international security
despite the fact that most refugees fleeing to Australia came
from those countries—as typified by the Tampa rescue—such
as Iraq and Afghanistan, countries with such dreadful regimes
that Australia was soon part of an occupying force there. At
the election held later that year, Howard claimed that Austra-
lia would “decide who comes to this country and the circum-
stances in which they come” (Marr and Wilkinson 2003, 245).
For the remainder of his tenure as prime minister, Howard’s
government maintained a tough line on refugees and related
issues through a number of specific strategies.
First, the government excised parts of Australia from its
migration zone: islands that are part of Australia were not
deemed to be Australian territory for the purposes of arrival
by refugees. Second, the mandatory detention regime for un-
planned asylum seeker-arrivals was tough-
The Woomera Detention Centre, for exam- ened. Some refugees were held in jail-like
ple, was a privately run desert facility that conditions for years. The Woomera Deten-
held men, women, and children, sometimes tion Centre, for example, was a privately
run desert facility that held men, women,
for years, while their status was being and children, sometimes for years, while
assessed. their status was being assessed. Here, most
human rights of detainees were violated and the conditions
were so dire that rape, severe mental illness, self-mutilation,
and suicide were everyday occurrences (HREOC 2004, 297).
Third, a complex off-shore detention program was established:
the Pacific Solution, where asylum seekers were (again) indefi-
nitely detained on the small island-state of Nauru. Fourth, a

race /ethnicity vol. 3 / no. 2  240

racism in australia: is denial still plausible?

range of other policies were introduced. For example, detainees

(if ever released) were expected to pay for the exorbitant costs
of their detention, some refugees were repatriated (and then
disappeared, probably murdered in their home countries), and
a system of temporary protection visas acted as a kind of subtle
psychological torture for many asylum seekers, further acting
as a disincentive for them to ever seek refuge in Australia.
These responses were so draconian that Howard was able to
woo the mercurial One Nation voting block and shift its sup-
port to the Liberal Party for the remainder of his government’s
tenure; at the same time, he marginalized the Labor opposi-
tion for several years and irreparably damaged One Nation’s
support base. The treatment of asylum seekers, which includes
using them as political wedges, continues to be a legacy of the
Howard government: it has made the current Labor Rudd gov-
ernment cautious about how to handle these issues. While the
new administration has softened certain aspects of the How-
ard government’s policies, at the time of this writing (Novem-
ber 2009) the issue has resurfaced in Australia over a pitifully
small number of Tamil refugees who have sought sanctuary in
Australia. Polling has suggested that issues about “the other,”
represented by asylum seekers, continue to be a potent political
issue (Grattan 2009).
While the plight of asylum seekers produced polarized and
strongly held views, the issue of multiculturalism and the gov-
ernment’s relations with ethnic communities was a parallel
but different story. Although, as noted above, Howard was an
avowed skeptic of multiculturalism, his government did main-
tain the infrastructure established by Fraser and enhanced dur-
ing the Hawke/Keating years. While some emblematic func-
tions ceased (e.g., Bureau of Immigration Research), the core
remained: migrant resource centers, TIS, SBS, funding for the
peak ethnic community body (the Federation of Ethnic Com-
munities’ Councils of Australia [FECCA]), ministers for multi-
cultural affairs (eventually downgraded to the position of par-
liamentary secretary), and a range of government programs.
By 2007 (the election that Howard lost), multicultural policy
had lapsed and did not appear likely to be resurrected.
The reaction to this by ethnic community organizations was
as varied as the communities themselves. While representative
non-government organizations such as FECCA condemned
the treatment of asylum seekers, they were put into a difficult
position by these events. Many members of ethnic communi-
ties strongly supported the government’s policies. For exam-
ple, many Arabic communities are dominated in Australia by
Christians who had fled persecution by Muslim regimes, and
these communities expressed concern that Muslim asylum
seekers represented the Islamization of Australia by stealth.
Umbrella peak bodies, like FECCA with a mandate to represent
the totality of ethnic communities, were thus compromised. To
condemn the government’s treatment of refugees would often
mean conflicting with the opinions of core constituencies and

spring 2010  241

 conrad gershevitch

would distract the organization from equally pressing issues

that would find broader support across diverse community
groups, such as finding adequate funding for appropriate nurs-
ing-home care for elder ethnic clients, or expanding SBS radio
broadcasts in languages of newly arrived groups.
The Rudd government has both maintained many of the
Howard government’s policies on these issues, while soften-
ing them in some areas. However, twelve years of incremental
withdrawal from multiculturalism has left a perverse legacy.
The focus on mainstreaming and the termination of old posi-
tive discrimination programs that had occurred under the
Howard years had effectively whitewashed issues of culture
from the realm of public policy. This is a damaging and argu-
able racist legacy. It is reflected in the continuing invisibility of
issues pertaining to race, faith, and ethnicity in Labor policy
and programs with the exception of Indigenous exclusion. For
example, recent policy frameworks on public health, the new
social inclusion agenda, and domestic violence all fundamen-
tally neglected to address culture.
Does this matter? The Australia of 2009, after sixty years
of postwar migration, is no longer the Australia that was pro-
tected under the Immigration Restriction Act. Some 45 percent
of Australia’s population was either born overseas or have at
least one parent who was born overseas (Department of Im-
migration and Citizenship 2009). Australia can no longer hope
to maintain the myth of the old monoculture of the past: it is
racially, culturally, and religiously diverse.
Because Australia is a federated nation, not all the responsi-
bility for multicultural policy and programs, including antira-
cism initiatives, vests in the Commonwealth government. With
this status comes a national responsibility
At the time of this writing, as multicul- to provide leadership on these matters. At
tural policy continues to languish at a na- the time of this writing, as multicultural
tional level it is not necessarily doing so at policy continues to languish at a national
level it is not necessarily doing so at state or
state or territory government levels. territory government levels. Some govern-
ments, such as the Victorian and Australian Capital Territory,
have maintained sound multicultural and antiracism policies as
well as introduced new human rights laws. On the other hand,
states such as New South Wales have let them languish and
are ambivalent about expanding human-rights protections. As
a result, we have a mixed national picture with antiracism pro-
tections and multicultural policy patchy across the country.

Case Study 2: The Experience

of International Students
Those who have worked in multicultural policy have known
for years that Australia has been gambling with the way it
treats foreign fee-paying students. The higher education sector
has been hit hard in its funding for many years, by both the
previous Hawke/Keating government who introduced Higher

race /ethnicity vol. 3 / no. 2  242

racism in australia: is denial still plausible?

Education Contribution Scheme and then the Howard govern-

ment, which allowed real funding to be whittled away (Aus-
tralian Geoscience Council 2001). During this time, the gap
between actual and required funding to maintain high-quality
teaching infrastructure appeared. Fee-paying noncitizens, par-
ticularly from the developing South East Asian nations, pro-
vided an ideal solution to hide the inadequacy of universities
in a transitional era when knowledge-based economies will be
more successful than commodity-based economies (Marginson
2009).
The development wave of Asian “tiger economies” was,
and to some extent still is, a once-in-a-century phenomenon
that has given the Australian economy a massive injection of
money from the sale of primary commodities (such as coal, iron
ore, uranium, and other minerals) to those economies now in
their industrial development stages. Instead of investing these
returns into human and physical infrastructure, Australia has
squandered the profits on a politically ideological experiment:
tax cuts and middle-class welfare in order to buy votes and
shift the economy from a more-or-less centralized one to that
of a radical free market economy (Kelly 2008).
In this environment, skilled immigrants and fee-paying stu-
dents became milking-cows. They gave much to Australia’s
economic, social, and cultural life while governments allowed
multiculturalism—the monitoring and gentle compliance with
values of respect and equity—to just happen. But multicultur-
alism, or the promoting of cultural diversity values, does not
self-manage even if it is beneficial that governments sometimes
give this impression.
In late May 2009, after years of building tension and half-
hearted monitoring of the demands, lives, needs, and human
rights of new and temporary arrivals, the programs began to
fall apart. This has been evident from the recent responses by
thousands of current and prospective Indian students who
have been publicly protesting. What is remarkable is that suc-
cessive governments have neglected the goose that has been
laying such golden eggs. Students from overseas inject ap-
proximately $15.5 billion into the Australian economy each
year, and in 2007 Australia provided 7.6 percent of the global
international tertiary education market (Access Economics
2009; UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2009, 43). Sensible finan-
cial planning would, in the very least, seek to protect such an
investment. This example illustrates how in an era of global
economic, social, cultural, and political integration, the issue of
cultural diversity and its related issue of racism must be—but
so often is not—addressed.

Race and Culture in Australia Today:

Political Threat or Collective Opportunity?
Continuing government ambivalence about race and culture
is, perhaps, bemusing. While surveys of the late 1980s indi-

spring 2010  243

 conrad gershevitch

cated substantial community concern, this feature has changed.

Opinions about racism have shifted with an increasingly plural
population, with changing age demographics (with the older,
more conservative generation dying), and with an increasingly
mobile (including traveled), educated, and skeptical popula-
tion. With increasing exposure to diversity over time, cultural
difference has been slowly demystified and acceptance has in-
creased. More recent surveys demonstrate the ever-increasing
belief that Australia is multicultural, and that diversity is good
for the country: socially, culturally, and economically (Markus
and Dharmalingam 2008, vii). This community acceptance is
at loggerheads with seeming government antagonism or am-
bivalence.
The reasons behind this must be largely based on conjec-
ture because, as with most issues dealing with cultural diver-
sity, Australia substantially underinvests in social research into
these areas. Conjecturing, we can assume that this avoidance is
due to two main factors, first, that Federal Parliament, rather
than becoming increasingly plural on grounds of cultural back-
ground (it has certainly improved on gender), has become more
monocultural. A generation earlier, the Labor party strongholds
were within inner city, lower socioeconomic status communi-
ties. These communities were often dominated by low-skill,
low-income, and low-education attainment immigrants and
were an important voter base. However, it is now assumed that
this voter base is securely committed, the political equity evan-
gelists of the 1980s within the ethnic community have largely
fallen silent, and there is, perhaps, less necessity to actively woo
this body of voters. Perhaps more importantly, it is now the
marginal seats (which are often urban-fringe) that represent the
new battleground for votes. Here, ethnicity and race is less im-
portant than middle-class welfare, bank interest rates, and the
quality of urban human infrastructure.
The second reason, related to the first, is the power of the
commercial media, which tends to sensationalize and simplify
narratives around culture and race and to appeal to those
small numbers of voters who continue to treat diversity with
antagonism. The numbers may be small but their impact upon
marginal seats can make or break governments and skew the
whole electoral system. For these reasons, all governments
tend to want the issues of race and ethnicity to “go away.”
This is a response, as noted in the case study on Australia’s
treatment of its international student population, that is at best
perplexing and at worst astonishingly tardy. Inactivity in this
area runs the risk of costing Australia potentially billions of
dollars in lost revenue from this international source of cultur-
ally diverse, yet willing, participants in Australia’s economic
and social life.
Where does this leave Australia’s treatment of race at the
end of the first decade of the twenty-first century? As noted at
the beginning of this paper, at the national level the only law
that protects people from racism is the RDA (1975). There is

race /ethnicity vol. 3 / no. 2  244

racism in australia: is denial still plausible?

not scope here to review the RDA, but merely to note that it is
now an old piece of legislation that, while perhaps underuti-
lized, has not been updated to address the new vectors of rac-
ism (such as cyber-racism). RDA does not protect people from
religious discrimination, nor does it have any criminal penal-
ties for the incitement to violence on the basis of race, culture,
or religion.
Other than the RDA, multicultural policy, and various laws
and programs at the second tier of government, Australia lacks
any other way of addressing the persis-
tence of racism other than what could be Other than the RDA, multicultural policy,
described as moral suasion. Racist violence, and various laws and programs at the sec-
vilification or abuse on grounds of cultural,
ond tier of government, Australia lacks any
ethnic, or religious identification may or
may not come under the ambit of criminal other way of addressing the persistence of
law. Race and ethnic community relations racism other than what could be described
appear, in Australia, to be increasingly seen as moral suasion.
as a process that just happens. Community
attitudes may, generally, be “tolerant” (a much-used but essen-
tially offensive word), although when violence between com-
munities explodes (as occurred in December 2005 at Cronulla,
a southern Sydney suburb) more often than not it is dismissed
as the actions of a small, extreme group, or even just high
jinks from fun-loving Aussie boys—even if some do not feel
comfortable with the idea of half-naked, abusive, drunk, rac-
ist-screaming, national flag-waving groups as an integral and
healthy part of a modern multicultural democracy.
Sometimes these violent outbursts have been abetted by com-
mercial radio “shock-jocks” who have a political influence in-
commensurate with their listenership. A fundamental problem
is that the voices of concerned politicians are seldom or only
selectively heard, and are not sustained. Cursory condemnation
when a situation explodes is not enough to set a national tone
that expresses zero tolerance toward race-hate, or hate based on
race-like characteristics such as ethnicity or faith. Moral consis-
tency and doggedness is required.
Once upon a time, Australia could claim, along with only
a few other countries, that it was a progressive multicultural
democracy. Many Australians still make this claim, forgetting
that the clock stopped in the mid-1990s. The moving finger
writes and having writ continues to move on, and with it the
consequences of Australian stasis on race and related discrimi-
nation. A review of international literature on these issues is
illustrative. The United Nations Development Program report
Cultural Liberty in Today’s Diverse World (UNDP 2004), and the
more recent UNESCO world report Investing in Cultural Diver-
sity and Intercultural Dialogue (UNESCO 2009) serve to illus-
trate Australia’s moral and intellectual torpor on these issues
by highlighting that those multicultural democracies that ac-
tively address intercultural dialogue and promote social cohe-
sion within a human rights framework are at the forefront of
countering racial, cultural, and religious discrimination. Aus-

spring 2010  245

 conrad gershevitch

tralia’s lack of an overarching human rights act, lacunae in

multicultural policy, and consistent avoidance (since 1996) to
adequately resource antiracism and social cohesion programs
or to fund research into racially and ethnically diverse commu-
nities illustrates these failures.
At this junction, however, it is important to reassert the par-
adox that was raised at the beginning of this paper and also to
insert some more optimistic views. The rather gloomy scenario
does not acknowledge a number of important points. The eight
state and territory governments of Australia do have important
roles, as service providers (that is primarily health, education,
community servicing, and policing) and within their areas of
responsibility. While wide-ranging in form and extent, many
of these governments do have unequivocal policies and laws
relating to multicultural values as well as human rights-based
legislation addressing religious or racial discrimination. At the
national level, Australia does enjoy perhaps the most innova-
tive and influential multicultural broadcaster of any country
(as noted above, SBS provides multiple-frequency television
and radio programs as well as Internet-based services) and,
while the news and current affairs programs on commercial
television and radio as well as the print media can often bor-
der on the racist, both mainstream print and electronic media
simultaneously reflect Australian’s love of cultural diversity
(such as travel, food, the arts, and décor) which acts as some-
what of a corrective to the negative messaging. The main prob-
lem, nevertheless, remains denial and resourcing. This means
that agencies with the responsibility to report to government,
or to conciliate claims of racism, as well as to promote social
cohesion programs with communities, or to fund research, are
marginalized, and are chronically under-resourced to conduct
their responsibilities effectively, and lack supporting legislative
tools.

Conclusion
Despite its racist history, its structural human rights inade-
quacies, and its ongoing social and cultural indolence, Australia
continues to be a relatively safe and free society. But for those
who work in the realm of antiracism, human rights, and ethnic
community advocacy, there is unease about where the coun-
try is heading. The twenty-first century will bring radical social
and demographic change, cultural transformation, and inevita-
ble climate change and its consequent human movements. The
world of the coming century will be one of far greater racial,
ethnic, cultural, religious, and linguistic intermixing, transmog-
rification, and evolution. It will be a world where the “comfort-
able and relaxed” denials of the past are toxic and attempts to
maintain them will be like a sandcastle buttressed against the
waves of an incoming tide.
It is time for Australia to metaphorically look at itself in a
human-rights mirror and search for the telltale lines of social,

race /ethnicity vol. 3 / no. 2  246

racism in australia: is denial still plausible?

cultural, and racial fracturing, even if this does require a new

politics that is brave, respectful, inclusive, and even visionary.
It is seldom too late to repair damage caused by denial and, in
Australia’s case, the time is now overdue to start the rehabili­
tation.

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