The Albanese government will expedite a new national racism strategy amid rising community tensions triggered by the war between Israel and Hamas, and the defeat of the Indigenous voice to parliament referendum last Saturday.
The minister for multicultural affairs, Andrew Giles, told Guardian Australia’s politics podcast there is a “renewed sense of urgency” about launching the new anti-racism campaign “given the events of recent weeks”.
Asked how concerned he was about social cohesion in Australia in the wake of the polarising referendum campaign and domestic anxieties about the Middle East conflict, Giles replied: “I’m very concerned.”
The government has been working with the Australian Human Rights Commission to set the foundations of an anti-racism strategy. Giles said “some research has gone into how we best go about it and how we best engage Australians who, in the context of busy lives, may not have the bandwidth to think through some of these issues in detail”.
“I think that is a big lesson of recent politics around the world – that we have got to understand how all the pressures and dimensions of an individual’s life impact on their willingness or capacity to engage in issues … we’ve got to be where people are, not where we want them to be.”
Giles said in order to be persuasive, the government had to consider how best to connect people with “experiences that may not be part of their lives”.
“I think we’ve got to combine the fact that there are heightened reasons to advance an anti-racism agenda, but we’ve also got to make sure … that the strategy speaks to those it needs to speak to.”
He said he was engaging with both the Jewish and Palestinian communities to take on board “the ideas and sentiments that exist there”. He said there were “hundreds of thousands of Australians who have a direct, immediate, personal connection to this awful conflict”.
“So for me, as the minister for multicultural affairs, my focus, my absolute priority, is on ensuring that we do everything we can to keep Australians together, to make sure that we never take for granted our hard-won social cohesion and support for a multicultural and diverse society,” Giles said.
The head of Asio, Mike Burgess, recently issued a rare public statement saying Australia’s terrorism threat level had not increased as a consequence of the Israel-Hamas war, but his agency was “concerned about the potential for opportunistic violence with little or no warning”.
Against a backdrop of partisan contention in the early stages of the Middle East conflict, that statement also included a plea for community harmony, with Burgess saying that “words matter”. He urged “all parties consider the implications for social cohesion when making public statements”.
Giles said the government listened to the advice of the security agencies. “There have been at least two neo-Nazi incidents on the streets of Melbourne in recent times, and that lends a sense of urgency.” It was “more important than ever to have a society that is anchored in a sense that we all deserve to be valued”.
“We’ve got to recognise that racism, antisemitism and Islamophobia have all been on the increase for some time, and there are forces in our society who seek to exploit these things.
“So building a strategy that’s all about bringing Australians together and recognising the harms that racism does again, not just to individuals, but to our sense of society, is absolutely fundamental right now.”
A scoping study associated with the national strategy said the myth that racism doesn’t exist in Australia “is easily debunked by research and evidence”.
The report noted that 52% of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people reported experiencing at least one form of racial prejudice in 2021, while 34% of people from non-English speaking backgrounds reported experiencing racism based on complexion, ethnic origin or religious belief.
Labor had promised to develop a new anti-racism strategy in opposition. The human rights commission had been aiming to complete a draft framework by early 2024.
Listen to the full interview on the Australian Politics podcast on Saturday
In Australia, support is available at Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline on 13 11 14, and MensLine on 1300 789 978. Support and counselling for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders is available at 13YARN (13 92 76) or the Aboriginal Counselling Services 0410 539 905
