17^th September 2013
by Dr Tim Sout­phom­masane,
Race Dis­crim­in­a­tion Com­mis­sion­er
Peace and Under­stand­ing Lecture,
Inter­na­tion­al House, Uni­ver­sity of Queens­land

Dr John Morrison, Chair, Board of Man­age­ment at Inter­na­tion­al House
Dr Carla Tromans, Director, Inter­na­tion­al House
Mr Wayne Briscoe, Executive Director, Mul­ti­cul­tur­al Affairs Queens­land
Mr Kevin Cocks, Queens­land Anti-Dis­crim­in­a­tion Com­mis­sion­er
Professor Clare Pullar, Pro-Vice Chan­cel­lor, Uni­ver­sity of Queens­land
Ms Agnes Whiten, Chair, Ethnic Com­munit­ies Council of Queens­land
Ms Jackie Trad, State Member for South Brisbane
Ms Gail Ker, CEO Access Services; Aus­trali­an Mul­ti­cul­tur­al Council
Dis­tin­guished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you for the invit­a­tion to deliver this year’s Peace and Under­stand­ing lecture here at Inter­na­tion­al House. In the spirit of peace, under­stand­ing and recon­cili­ation, I acknow­ledge the tra­di­tion­al owners of the land – the Turabul and Jugera peoples – and pay my respect to elders past and present.
I’m delighted to be here tonight among friends. Inter­na­tion­al House is certainly a friend of the Aus­trali­an Human Rights Com­mis­sion, not least as a supporter of the ‘Racism. It Stops with Me’ campaign. As many of you know, that public awareness campaign is a central part of the National Anti-Racism Strategy that the Com­mis­sion leads. So I can’t think of a better place to deliver my first speech in Queens­land as Race Dis­crim­in­a­tion Com­mis­sion­er.
I know that you run a Home Away From Home workshop for your residents, as part of your support for ‘Racism. It Stops with Me’ – a workshop which teaches young people practical skills in combating racism and enhancing cultural exchange. It is work like this – in the realm of the everyday inter­ac­tions – that the most important progress can be made in educating com­munit­ies about racism.
It is only natural that Inter­na­tion­al House should be taking the lead, because cultural vision has always been a hallmark of this insti­tu­tion. I’ve looked back, for instance, through past Peace and Under­stand­ing Lectures. What is striking about them is how bold and pro­gress­ive the lectures have been. In the late 1960s, those deliv­er­ing the lectures were already anti­cip­at­ing the import­ance of Australia’s rela­tion­ships with Asia – anti­cip­at­ing what we have in recent times been calling the Asian Century.
The period in which this Lecture was inaug­ur­ated, the late 1960s, was an important time in the history of racism. It was only a few weeks ago, as many of you will remember, that we marked the 50^th anniversary of Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s speech in Wash­ing­ton DC – that immortal speech in which he declared, “I have a dream”.
It may sound an odd to say ‘we’ about what was a defining moment in the American civil rights movement’s fight to end racial segreg­a­tion and dis­crim­in­a­tion. And, yet, as anyone who has ever seen or heard those soaring words of Dr King will know, it is only natural to use the word ‘we’. For how could anyone deny the universal power of Dr King’s dream – of a society in which people weren’t judged by the colour of their skin, but the content of their character?
If our moral sym­path­ies are piqued by what was ulti­mately an American moment, it was also because it had global import. The American Civil Rights movement was, of course, part of a larger inter­na­tion­al struggle to end racial dis­crim­in­a­tion. A struggle that cul­min­ated with the Inter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion on the Elim­in­a­tion of all Forms of Racial Dis­crim­in­a­tion coming into force in 1969.
It was Australia’s signature to this con­ven­tion that preceded the intro­duc­tion of the Racial Dis­crim­in­a­tion Act in our Com­mon­wealth par­lia­ment in 1975. This piece of law was, in turn, an expres­sion of a new sens­ib­il­ity in Aus­trali­an political culture; a recog­ni­tion that Australia was a country that was mul­ti­cul­tur­al.
It was forty years ago that the word mul­ti­cul­tur­al was intro­duced to our national vocab­u­lary. Though the word was borrowed from Canada, it non­ethe­less had an unmis­tak­able Aus­trali­an accent when the then immig­ra­tion minister Al Grassby used it for the first time. As Grassby put it, mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism was about expanding the family of the nation. It wasn’t about repu­di­at­ing an Aus­trali­an national identity. It was about ensuring that our national identity could adapt to the new diversity brought about by waves of mass immig­ra­tion from Europe.
Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism
If one takes a long view of Aus­trali­an mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, it is hard to argue against its success. Aus­trali­an society performs admirably when placed alongside other countries in the West which have had to contend with mass immig­ra­tion. The Aus­trali­an model works, and works well.
As political historian Robert Manne has described it, there is near universal acknow­ledge­ment that “the painless accept­ance of millions of non-Anglo-Celtic migrants from the four corners of the Earth rep­res­ents one of Australia’s great political and social achieve­ments”. Indeed, this is something even many critics of mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism readily concede.
The effect­ive­ness of the Aus­trali­an model of mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism can be judged against three standards: social mobility, social cohesion and civic integ­ra­tion.
Let’s start with social mobility. It is most telling that the children of immig­rants out­per­form children of native-born Aus­trali­ans, namely, occupying a larger pro­por­tion of people in highly skilled occu­pa­tions than the latter. Australia is one of the very few OECD countries – Canada and the United States are other notable countries – where this is the case.
On measures of social cohesion, the results are also impress­ive. At the end of the Second World War, well over ninety per cent of Australia’s pop­u­la­tion was of Anglo-Celtic stock. Today, over twenty-five per cent of Aus­trali­ans were born overseas, while another twenty per cent are the children of immig­rants. It is no mean feat that dramatic changes in the cultural com­pos­i­tion of Australia have taken place without wide­spread social rancour or dis­rup­tion. Consider, by contrast, Europe, where an influx of immig­rants over the decades has been accom­pan­ied by con­sid­er­able tensions – including periodic race riots.
Perhaps most import­antly, Aus­trali­an mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism has involved an expres­sion of cit­izen­ship. There has been a clear path for immig­rants to follow in order to become full members of an Aus­trali­an national community. It is a demon­stra­tion of success that, among OECD countries, Australia has a high take-up rate of cit­izen­ship from immig­rants: an estimated eighty per cent of immig­rants with more than ten years of residence have chosen to adopt Aus­trali­an cit­izen­ship.
What has been crucial is that Australia has got the balance right between diversity and solid­ar­ity. We have avoided the rigidity of the French model of assim­il­a­tion – which demands that all expres­sions of cultural dif­fer­ence be effect­ively quar­ant­ined to the private sphere. We have avoided the pitfalls of the tra­di­tion­al German approach, in which immig­rants were consigned to being guest workers and perpetual for­eign­ers in the country they came to call their home. And we have avoided the excess­ively relaxed approach of countries such as the Neth­er­lands and the United Kingdom. In such countries, cel­eb­rat­ing cultural diversity has fostered what the economist Amartya Sen has labelled plural mono­cul­tur­al­ism – in which com­munit­ies live side by side, but without mixing or inter­act­ing with each other.
Racism
There is a his­tor­ic­al con­nec­tion between mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism and anti-racism in Australia. A mul­ti­cul­tur­al Australia coincided with the demise of White Australia – an ideal that was given practical force through an immig­ra­tion policy that dis­crim­in­ated on the basis of race via that most notorious dictation test.
Admit­tedly, this con­nec­tion is sometimes unhelpful in one sense. Because if mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism does mean a rejection of racism, what happens if you don’t neces­sar­ily endorse mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism? What if you then conclude that rejecting racism is simply ideo­lo­gic­al?
It is troubling that claims about racism are sometimes dismissed as exag­ger­ated. There are times when some will downplay racism as a marginal social concern.
It is helpful to take a look at the facts. The facts tell us this: racism does exist in Aus­trali­an society. According to the Chal­len­ging Racism Project, led by research­ers at the Uni­ver­sity of Western Sydney, about 20 per cent of Aus­trali­ans have exper­i­enced forms of race hate talk (for instance, racial slurs or verbal abuse). About 11 per cent of Aus­trali­ans report that they have exper­i­enced exclusion from their work­places or social activ­it­ies based on their racial back­ground. More than one in 20 Aus­trali­ans say they have been phys­ic­ally attacked because of their race. Abori­gin­al and Torres Strait Islander Aus­trali­ans continue to exper­i­ence much higher rates of racism than the rest of our pop­u­la­tion.
From the per­spect­ive of the Aus­trali­an Human Rights Com­mis­sion, our stat­ist­ics reveal a sig­ni­fic­ant increase in the number of com­plaints made by members of the Aus­trali­an public about racial dis­crim­in­a­tion in the year 2012 – 13. There has been a notice­able increase of 59 per cent in the number of com­plaints about racial hatred compared to 2011-12.
But facts and figures don’t tell the full story. For those who exper­i­ence racial hatred and vili­fic­a­tion it’s not a numbers game. Let me give some examples. Now, I am about to report to you what has been said to some of the people who have made com­plaints to us. I am going to use the actual language used in the com­plaints; I need to warn you that this may be con­front­ing. If anybody has a problem with this please let me know now.
In one case, a man of Jewish ethnic origin alleged that video clips on a video sharing site incited hatred towards Jewish people and included content such as offering money to kill Jewish people.
Take another case. A man of Asian back­ground, com­plained about a website which he said advocated violence against Asians. The comments on the website included: “Asian People Flood our city with their Asian shops with their language all over them, having their own dedicated “china town” and their own suburb …”; “… we under­stand everyone has different levels of hate for Asians and so we have … Yellers. Their job is to Yell at the Asians with passion i.e. YOU GOOK F**K OFF TO CHINA and do whatever they can to show Asians they are not welcome in Australia … Fighters … are there to express their anger phys­ic­ally by laying the Gooks out.”
And in another case, a man of Abori­gin­al descent, claimed that a colleague at work subjected him to a barrage of racial abuse over a number of months which ulti­mately led to him leaving his employ­ment. The alleged comments included “nigger”, “nigger c**t”, “abo”, “boong”, “f**king nigger”, “I’ve never worked with a nigger before”, “spear catcher”, “why don’t you go and sit with your black bastard family and get drunk” and “get f**ked you nigger dog”. Following the cessation of his employ­ment, the com­plain­ant was assessed by a psy­chi­at­rist and sub­sequently the company’s insurer accepted liability for the psy­cho­lo­gic­al injury the com­plain­ant had sustained arising from the alleged events.
I reiterate: these are not hypo­thet­ic­als. They are actual com­plaints that were brought to, and resolved by the Aus­trali­an Human Rights Com­mis­sion.
And this is how the law under the Racial Dis­crim­in­a­tion Act works. If you believe that there has been a breach in the law, you can bring forward a complaint to the Aus­trali­an Human Rights Com­mis­sion. The Com­mis­sion, if it deems that the complaint has some substance, will then attempt to con­cili­ate between the com­plain­ant and the respond­ent. Only if con­cili­ation fails does a matter then poten­tially end up in the courts in a civil action. I explain this only because many are not familiar with the work of the Com­mis­sion in handling com­plaints and con­duct­ing con­cili­ation.
The Impact of Racism
It’s often said that racism is just a part of life: that racism will always exist; that those who exper­i­ence should ulti­mately have to accept it with stoicism. I don’t think that’s it’s good enough to leave it at this.
There are sig­ni­fic­ant harms that racism causes. Prejudice and dis­crim­in­a­tion are barriers to fair treatment and equal oppor­tun­ity. They harm an individual’s freedom to par­ti­cip­ate as a citizen in the community. Where it exists in suf­fi­cient doses, racism can impair social cohesion.
It can also affect people’s physical health and life expect­ancy. A growing body of evidence suggests that dis­crim­in­a­tion and racism are linked to a range of adverse health con­di­tions among Abori­gin­al and Torres Strait Islander peoples, such as smoking, substance use, psy­cho­lo­gic­al distress and poor self-assessed health status. Similarly, other research suggests a link between ethnic and racial dis­crim­in­a­tion and poor mental health and wellbeing.
We also have economic reasons for believing that racism matters. When racism occurs, it can get in the way of par­ti­cip­a­tion and pro­ductiv­ity. Our economy can suffer.
But we shouldn’t forget the very human cost of racism. As part of con­sulta­tions the Com­mis­sion conducted as part of the National Anti-Racism Strategy, we asked respond­ents to tell us how racism made them feel.
Here’s what some of the respond­ents said:
· “It makes me feel less connected to Australia and the Aus­trali­an community to the point where I find it difficult to identify as Aus­trali­an.”
· “It makes me feel like I have made the wrong decision to enter this country.”
· “Intim­id­ated, unequal as an Aus­trali­an, unable to give my best to my adopted country Australia which I now call home.”
· “I exper­i­ence racism on an all too regular basis … It is a tre­mend­ous psy­cho­lo­gic­al blow because it is something that I exper­i­enced from age 5 to now and I am often left feeling helpless and vul­ner­able for days after­wards.”
· “It makes me feel like I am lower than everyone else, an intruder who is not part of this society.”
Those who have been on the receiving end of racism will tell you: no matter how much per­spect­ive you may bring to bear on your exper­i­ence, it can hurt your sense of worth; it can reduce to you feeling like a second-class citizen.
Free Speech
The con­clu­sion that is sometimes drawn from all this is to believe that racism is all about hurt feelings. Clearly, I don’t believe that this is true. The harm of racism is a civic one, as well as personal: it wounds our values of fairness and equality, and it wounds people’s ability to con­trib­ute as members of our society.
There is, however, some debate at the moment about whether our existing laws against racial vili­fic­a­tion may skew too far into pro­tect­ing hurt feelings at the expense of free speech. At least, that is how much of the debate is framed.
It would be helpful, though, to be exactly clear about just how our racial vili­fic­a­tion laws operate. Our current laws send a clear message to the community that freedom of speech must be exercised respons­ibly, and does not extend to promoting hatred and vili­fic­a­tion on the basis of race. Section 18C of the Racial Dis­crim­in­a­tion Act makes unlawful an act that is reas­on­ably likely to “offend, insult, humiliate or intim­id­ate” others on the basis of their race, colour or national or ethnic origin.
This provision was intro­duced because there is a con­nec­tion between racial hatred and racial violence. Where people can degrade others freely, the effect may well be to encourage the physical escal­a­tion of prejudice. In this sense, laws against racial dis­crim­in­a­tion have never been about pro­tect­ing people from having their feelings hurt. Indeed, Section 18C has always contained an objective test: for speech to be con­sidered unlawful, it must be proven reas­on­ably likely to have caused harm. This has been the way that courts have inter­preted federal vili­fic­a­tion laws since they were intro­duced in 1995.
The current pro­vi­sions of the Racial Dis­crim­in­a­tion Act aren’t well under­stood. Thus it is only rarely mentioned that section 18D of the Act provides exemp­tions to unlawful speech based on free speech. It’s not against the law simply to have caused offence or insult to somebody on the basis of their race. You are entitled to a defence, provided that what you’ve said can be shown to have been made in the public interest and made in good faith. This was what brought Herald-Sun columnist Andrew Bolt undone in in 2011: the judge in his case found he didn’t get his facts right, he didn’t try to check his facts, he didn’t demon­strate good faith.
If there is to be a debate about racial dis­crim­in­a­tion laws and their impact on free speech, let’s by all means have it. That is how it should be. As citizens in a liberal democracy, we should be able to conduct robust debates. If there are to be lim­it­a­tions of what we can say, they should have good jus­ti­fic­a­tions.
But if there is to be a change to the existing law, we should raise a number of questions. Would a change leave people with adequate pro­tec­tions against racial hatred? Would a change have the possible effect of encour­aging people to think that they have greater scope to harass and vilify others on the grounds of race? What would be the overall impact on our human rights and freedoms?
Let me be clear about one thing. Any change in our laws must not send the message that it is accept­able to vilify others on the basis of their race, and to justify it in the name of free speech.
Free speech has never been an absolute value. Even the liberal philo­soph­ic­al case for free speech has had its limits. John Stuart Mill, for instance, didn’t believe that free speech justified the incite­ment of violence or the causing of harm to others. Or as the American Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr famously put it, free speech doesn’t mean that you should be entitled to yell “Fire” in a crowded theatre.
In practice, free speech in a modern society has never been entirely unres­tric­ted. We have many laws that limit our freedom of speech: laws con­cern­ing defam­a­tion, laws con­cern­ing advert­ising, laws con­cern­ing obscenity, laws con­cern­ing fraud, laws con­cern­ing national security – to name a few. Racial dis­crim­in­a­tion laws aren’t the only ones that prevent people from saying some things, without there being some con­sequences.
Talking About Racism
If we are honest with ourselves, we would concede that we still find it difficult as a country to talk about racism. We see regularly from our public debates that levelling the charge of racism in Australia isn’t something to be done lightly. It tends to provoke strong, vehement responses.
The pattern goes like this. Before long in the debate, the denial begins. What caused the con­tro­versy in the first place wasn’t really racism – because that term should be reserved for only the worst cat­egor­ies of hate and violence. And then comes the indig­na­tion that someone would dare to call someone racist. If there’s anything offensive, it might be that someone could even con­tem­plate charging a fellow Aus­trali­an with racism – that most irre­deem­able sin. The implic­a­tion is that a real Aussie doesn’t cry racism; sometimes you’ve just got to harden up and cop bad behaviour on the chin, however hurtful.
In his recent book The Lucky Culture, journ­al­ist Nick Cater mounts an argument along these lines. He suggests that while we may say that someone is racially pre­ju­diced, we should refrain from calling someone a racist. Whereas the former involves ”accus­a­tions of frailty or ignorance”, the latter involves ”con­dem­na­tions of moral character.”
Mr Cater has written a book that has generated a good deal of public attention and debate. But the logic at work here is ques­tion­able. Do we go to the trouble of making such fine dis­tinc­tions between hooligan behaviour and hooligans? Or between criminal behaviour and criminals? Why must we take such extraordin­ary care to avoid offending those who engage in racist behaviour?
It is important – vitally important – that we not be sheepish about calling out racism. Any vigilance on racism must extend into our everyday lives, not least our public spaces. During the past 12 months, we have seen many episodes of ugly racism on buses and trains, and on the sporting fields.
But civic harms require civic remedies. By this I mean that combating racism involves a test of cit­izen­ship. Too often, otherwise good citizens fail to do their part. Faced with the intim­id­at­ing prospect of having to stand up to verbal or physical violence, we find it easier to shrink away – to ration­al­ise that the safest option is to mind our own business and not speak up.
Now, I don’t believe that there is an absolute oblig­a­tion to put ourselves in harm’s way in solid­ar­ity with a fellow citizen or person in need. Insisting on this is easier said than done; insisting on this may in fact be foolhardy, if a con­front­a­tion may escalate into a potential bloodbath. But sometimes it can be enough for us to show support for a victim, to report an incident, or to bear witness. What matters, though, is that we assume some respons­ib­il­ity – that we do something.
This has certainly been the message of the ‘Racism. It Stops with Me’ campaign that the Com­mis­sion has been leading. It’s a campaign that aims to empower Aus­trali­ans to take practical action against racism. I’m delighted that Inter­na­tion­al House is a supporter of the campaign – one of the 170 or so organ­isa­tions that have committed to under­tak­ing anti-racism activ­it­ies. It is heart­en­ing to know that com­munit­ies and organ­isa­tions across the country have answered the call to action on racism that was made a year ago when the National Anti-Racism Strategy was launched.
I want to leave you this evening, however, with a challenge for how each of us, as indi­vidu­als, can confront racism. And it concerns a par­tic­u­lar variety of racism, what others have termed ‘casual racism’.
Today, racism doesn’t need to be violent or malicious to count as racism. In its con­tem­por­ary form, racial prejudice and dis­crim­in­a­tion are often more subtle than this. It is often something that people often dismiss or don’t notice. It may be a joke, an off-handed comment, or even who gets included in chats in the work kitchen or water cooler. And it concerns not so much a belief in the superi­or­ity of races – an idea that only an extreme fringe would these days endorse – but prejudice born of ste­reo­types rehearsed about someone’s skin colour or ancestral back­ground.
But while acts of racism may be unin­ten­tion­al or the result of ignorance, but they still have con­sequences. That is what is most important in any con­ver­sa­tion that we now have about racism: it is as much about impact as it is about intention.
In those situ­ations of casual racism, I want to ask: Is there something that we can do to start a con­ver­sa­tion with a family member, a friend, a neighbour, a teammate, or a colleague? Can we quietly pull someone aside at the right moment and ask exactly what they mean when they said something?
Doing things of these kinds isn’t about lecturing others about their failings: it’s about getting others to see things from a different per­spect­ive. How would they like it if they were subjected to the same belittling treatment? Or how would they like it if someone were to say similar things about their son or daughter or husband or wife?
That is the challenge I want to ask you to consider. Because it is at the level of everyday life, in our families, our schools, our uni­ver­sit­ies, our neigh­bour­hoods, our clubs, our work­places – everyday – that all of us have the capacity to change attitudes about racism. But then that is how it should be. If we are inter­ested in building peace and under­stand­ing in our world, we can only begin with those closest to us.