Hate inci­dents occur against many indi­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ties on the basis of race, ethnic/national ori­gin, reli­gion, gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ty, dis­abil­i­ty, and oth­er attrib­ut­es. How­ev­er, most of these inci­dents go unre­port­ed and undoc­u­ment­ed. This is part­ly due to the fact that most tar­get­ed com­mu­ni­ties have no report­ing mech­a­nism with­in their com­mu­ni­ty organ­i­sa­tions to report the inci­dent to. Some inci­dents are report­ed to human rights bod­ies, and oth­ers to the police, but these appear to be a small pro­por­tion of the total num­ber of inci­dents occur­ring.

The sit­u­a­tion in Aus­tralia is that there are only three com­mu­ni­ties – Jew­ish, Mus­lim and Asian – who have a report­ing and doc­u­men­ta­tion sys­tem, and which pro­duce reports on hate inci­dents against their com­mu­ni­ty.

The three reports used in this assess­ment are: the Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry’s (ECAJ) ‘Report on Anti­semitism in Aus­tralia’ (pro­duced annu­al­ly since 1990); the Islam­o­pho­bia Reg­is­ter Aus­trali­a’s (IRA) ‘Islam­o­pho­bia in Aus­tralia’ (three reports pro­duced, in 2017, 2019 and 2022); and the Asian Aus­tralian Alliance’s (AAA) ‘Covid-19 Coro­n­avirus Racism Inci­dent Report’ (two reports pro­duced, in 2020 and in 2021).

The reports by each of these organ­i­sa­tions vary in their char­ac­ter­is­tics in four dis­tinct ways: 1. dif­fer­ent or unknown cri­te­ria for inclusion/exclusion as a hate inci­dent, 2. dif­fer­ent data cat­e­gories of hate inci­dents (notably, two reports include online dis­course as inci­dents while one report excludes online), 3. dif­fer­ent trans­paren­cy lev­els of inci­dents (eg one report lists all inci­dents, two reports pro­vide some exam­ples of inci­dents), and 4. dif­fer­ent time frames of report­ing peri­ods. This leads to the sit­u­a­tion where mak­ing accu­rate com­par­isons between the inci­dent data in the dif­fer­ent reports is com­pli­cat­ed.

Despite this, by look­ing at the var­i­ous reports by each organ­i­sa­tion, a clear­er and more com­pre­hen­sive pic­ture of hate inci­dents in Aus­tralia emerges from the data and the descrip­tion of inci­dents, at least with­in these three tar­get­ed com­mu­ni­ties. In addi­tion, ten inci­dents, fair­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the inci­dents occur­ring across the cat­e­gories of inci­dents, and direct­ly quot­ed from the reports, are pro­vid­ed below for each of these three com­mu­ni­ties.

To pro­vide some con­text, the Aus­tralian pop­u­la­tion is com­posed of 25 mil­lion peo­ple. Accord­ing to the Aus­tralian Bureau of Sta­tis­tics in 2016, in Aus­tralia there were just under 100,000 Jews (0.4% of the pop­u­la­tion), 604,000 Mus­lims (2.6%), and 1.2 mil­lion peo­ple of Chi­nese ances­try (5.6%).

All the data and oth­er infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed here are derived from the reports pub­lished by these three organ­i­sa­tions – ECAJ, IRA, and AAA.

Sum­ma­ry of Inci­dents

In Aus­tralia, there were 3,522 report­ed hate inci­dents in the sev­en-year peri­od between 17 Sep­tem­ber 2014 and 30 Sep­tem­ber 2021. That amounts to an aver­age of over 9 inci­dents a week. This total can be divid­ed into two peri­ods in order to more fair­ly assess the inci­dents.

In the first peri­od, in the five years between late 2014 and 2019, there were 2,203 report­ed hate inci­dents. These were com­posed of 1,364 anti-Jew­ish inci­dents (in the 60 months from 1 Octo­ber 2014 to 30 Sep­tem­ber 2019) and 839 anti-Mus­lim inci­dents (in the 64 months from 17 Sep­tem­ber 2014 to 31 Decem­ber 2019).

In the sec­ond peri­od, in the two years of 2020 and 2021, there were 1,319 report­ed hate inci­dents. These were com­posed of 778 anti-Jew­ish inci­dents (in the 24 months from 1 Octo­ber 2019 to 30 Sep­tem­ber 2021) and 541 anti-Asian inci­dents (in the 15 months from 2 April 2020 to 28 June 2021).

* indi­cates a peri­od of less than 12 months

NOTES on the chart and table “Doc­u­ment­ed Hate Inci­dents in Aus­tralia: 2013 ‑2021”

IRA: the 2014 fig­ure is for a 4‑month peri­od. The num­bers for 2016 and 2017 are cal­cu­lat­ed by halv­ing the known total for the 24-month peri­od; dit­to for the 2018 and 2019 num­bers. An IRA report for the years 2020 and 2021 is yet to be pro­duced.

AAA: the first report cov­ered a 2‑month peri­od in 2020.

Anti-Jew­ish Inci­dents

Anti-Jew­ish inci­dents in Aus­tralia have been col­lect­ed and doc­u­ment­ed by the Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry (ECAJ) since 1990. The ECAJ is the peak rep­re­sen­ta­tive body of the Aus­tralian Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty. An annu­al report, Report on Anti­semitism in Aus­tralia, is pub­lished cov­er­ing the 12-month peri­od to 30 Sep­tem­ber each year. The doc­u­men­ta­tion was spurred on by a spate of arson attacks on syn­a­gogues in Syd­ney in 1990 and 1991.

Data col­lect­ed is restrict­ed exclu­sive­ly to inci­dents which were report­ed to, and authen­ti­cat­ed and logged by, any one or more of the fol­low­ing: Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty roof bod­ies in each State; their respec­tive Com­mu­ni­ty Secu­ri­ty Groups (if any); the ECAJ itself.

Cri­te­ria for Inclu­sion in the Inci­dents Tal­ly, and for Exclu­sion from it, are repro­duced in each report in the Inci­dents chap­ter. The ECAJ, unlike oth­er organ­i­sa­tions, does not include in its tal­ly of inci­dents gen­er­al expres­sions of hate against Jews that appear online, as these are too numer­ous and ubiq­ui­tous to mea­sure from year to year in any mean­ing­ful way.

The num­ber of report­ed anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents each year from 2013 to 2021 were: 231 inci­dents in 2013; 312 in 2014; 190 in 2015; 210 in 2016; 230 in 2017; 366 in 2018; 368 in 2019; 331 in 2020; and 447 in 2021. This was a total of 2,685 anti-Jew­ish inci­dents report­ed for the 9 years from 1 Octo­ber 2012 to 30 Sep­tem­ber 2021. Thus, the aver­age num­ber of report­ed anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents annu­al­ly dur­ing this 9‑year peri­od is 298.

ECAJ has eight cat­e­gories of inci­dents. Between 2013 and 2021, the num­ber of inci­dents each year, in each cat­e­go­ry, was in the range of: ● phys­i­cal assault 3–15 inci­dents; ● ver­bal abuse, harass­ment, intim­i­da­tion 75–147; ● van­dal­ism 6–22; ● graf­fi­ti 21–106; ● email 10–109; ● postal mail 1–23; ● tele­phone 10–39; and, ● posters, stick­ers, plac­ards, leaflets 2–137.

In 2021, anti-Jew­ish inci­dents, as a per­cent­age of the total num­ber of inci­dents, in descend­ing order, com­prised: ver­bal abuse 33%; graf­fi­ti 24%; email, postal, phone 23%; plac­ards, posters, stick­ers 16%; phys­i­cal assault 2%; van­dal­ism 2%.

Exam­ples of anti-Jew­ish Inci­dents:

As record­ed in the ECAJ reports, cov­er­ing 1 Octo­ber 2013 to 30 Sep­tem­ber 2021.

• Assault: “In Bon­di, just after mid­night on Sat­ur­day 26 Octo­ber 2013, five Jews walk­ing home from a Shab­bat din­ner with friends were ver­bal­ly abused and called “Fuck­ing Jews… Dirty Jews… dirty Jew cunts” in a street in Bon­di, Syd­ney, by eight men and youths. They were then phys­i­cal­ly assault­ed by some of the abusers, includ­ing with smashed glass bot­tles. … Injuries sus­tained includ­ed a frac­tured cheek­bone, bro­ken nose, bro­ken jaw, con­cus­sion, lac­er­a­tions and bruis­ing, bleed­ing on the brain, glass frag­ments in an eye.”
• Abuse: “Around 30 Jew­ish stu­dents, aged from 5–12 years old, on a school bus, which picks up stu­dents from a Jew­ish school, in the east­ern sub­urbs of Syd­ney, were sub­ject­ed to phys­i­cal and ver­bal threats, when the bus was board­ed by 5–8 teenagers who yelled anti­se­mit­ic abuse, includ­ing “all Jews must die”, “kill the Jews”, “Heil Hitler”, and “we’re going to slit your throats” at the stu­dents (6 Aug 2014).”
• Abuse: “A male and a young boy walked up to two iden­ti­fi­able Jews and said “Shar­mou­ta! You should know what that means, Jew boy”, then he said “You fuck­ing dis­gust­ing Jews. Go back to the gas cham­bers”, Elstern­wick, Mel­bourne (16 Dec. 2020). [Note: ‘Shar­mou­ta’ is Ara­bic for ‘pros­ti­tute’, a dire insult in Ara­bic cul­ture].”
• Abuse: “Two teenage boys harassed a female Jew­ish teenag­er on a bus, say­ing things like “It’s a shame that Hitler didn’t kill all the Jews. … We would go back and make sure he wipes them all out.” The boys exit­ed the bus at the same time as the Jew­ish stu­dent and fol­lowed her for two blocks, east­ern Syd­ney (30 Oct. 2018).”
• Van­dal­ism: “Arson attack by pour­ing accel­er­ant and light­ing it, on the “Beit Tephilla” [sign] which has a Star of David, out­side the Jew­ish build­ing at Rook­wood Ceme­tery, Syd­ney (23 March 2019).”
• Graf­fi­ti: “Graf­fi­ti of “Gas Kikes”, “Reject Jew­ish Poi­son”, “Zion­ist Occu­pied Gov­ern­ment”, “Smash Zog”, “Hitler Was Right”, “Hitler Did Noth­ing Wrong”, “Sieg Heil”, “Hitler Youth”, “Rape Jews”, “Jews Hate Us Revolt”, “Jews Out” on a build­ing, Prahran, Mel­bourne (22 July 2019).”
• Phone: “A syn­a­gogue received a threat­en­ing phone call from a per­son who stat­ed “I am gonna burn down all your syn­a­gogues by tomor­row”, Syd­ney (15 Jan. 2019).”
• Postal: “Let­ter sent to a syn­a­gogue con­tain­ing text of: “Jews are mur­der­ers”, “the Jews invent­ed ter­ror­ism” and “Adolph Hitler was 100% right and cor­rect to put that evil race in the oven”, Syd­ney (2 June 2021).”
• Email: “… to [a Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty organ­i­sa­tion]: “Last email. This is why Jews are hat­ed. Filthy Jew­ish sacks of shit; I am past being polite you scat­o­log­i­cal Jew­ish sack of shit. Just anoth­er yid wast­ing my time you kike cunt” (16 May 2019).”
• Posters: “Dur­ing the peri­od in review [2018], there were 125 inci­dents of Antipodean Resis­tance ban­ners, posters and stick­ers,” includ­ing posters by Antipodean Resis­tance with the text call­ing to “Legalise the Exe­cu­tion of Jews” [show­ing the shoot­ing of a Jew by a Nazi in 1941] and “Reject Jew­ish Poi­son” post­ed across Aus­tralia through­out 2017 and 2018.

Anti-Mus­lim Inci­dents

Anti-Mus­lim inci­dents in Aus­tralia are col­lect­ed and doc­u­ment­ed by the Islam­o­pho­bia Reg­is­ter Aus­tralia (IRA), which was insti­tut­ed by Mari­am Veiszadeh in 2014; the reports are edit­ed by Dr Derya Iner, with the sup­port of Charles Sturt Uni­ver­si­ty. As explained on page 56 (2014–2015), “The Islam­o­pho­bia Reg­is­ter Aus­tralia was estab­lished by Mari­am Veiszadeh in response to increas­ing harass­ment and attacks against Aus­tralian Mus­lims one day after the police raids” which “occurred in Syd­ney and Bris­bane on 18 Sep­tem­ber 2014.”

The first report cov­ered the 16-month peri­od from 17 Sep­tem­ber 2014 to 31 Decem­ber 2015 (pub­lished in 2017), the sec­ond and third reports each cov­ered a 24-month peri­od, name­ly, 2016–2017 (pub­lished in 2019) and 2018–2019 (pub­lished in 2022). Data is col­lect­ed through inci­dents which are report­ed to the IRA via its web­site and Face­book page.

In sum­ma­ry, the num­ber of inci­dents for each report is:

• 2014–2015 (16-month peri­od): 243 inci­dents (com­posed of 111 phys­i­cal and 132 online, ie 55% online), com­pris­ing 102 inci­dents in 2014, and 141 inci­dents in 2015;
• 2016–2017 (24-month peri­od): 349 inci­dents (com­posed of 202 phys­i­cal and 147 online, ie 42% online), amount­ing to a 43% increase in inci­dents from the pre­vi­ous report, and com­pris­ing an aver­age of 174.5 inci­dents per year;
• 2018–2019 (24-month peri­od): 247 inci­dents (com­posed of 138 phys­i­cal and 109 online, ie 44% online), amount­ing to a 29% decrease in inci­dents from the pre­vi­ous report, and com­pris­ing an aver­age of 123.5 inci­dents per year.

There was a total of 839 anti-Mus­lim inci­dents between 17 Sep­tem­ber 2014 and 31 Decem­ber 2019, a 64-month peri­od, of which 388 (47%) were online posts/comments. The aver­age num­ber of report­ed anti-Mus­lim inci­dents annu­al­ly between 2015 and 2019 (a five-year peri­od) is 147.

The first Report of anti-Mus­lim inci­dents, cov­er­ing 2014 and 2015, has nine cat­e­gories of inci­dents (both offline and online), as out­lined on pages 60–62: Phys­i­cal assault; Ver­bal abuse/threats; Non-ver­bal abuse; Writ­ten abuse; Damage/graffiti; Offen­sive media con­tent; Hate mail post­ed to the Reg­is­ter; Social exclu­sion and dis­crim­i­na­tion; and Discrimination/harassment by author­i­ties (and gov­ern­ment agen­cies).

The sec­ond Report of anti-Mus­lim inci­dents, cov­er­ing 2016 and 2017, for the 202 “offline cas­es”, notes (on page 62) in a chart the types of inci­dents and per­cent­ages of the total num­ber, in descend­ing order as: ● Hate speech 50%; ● Graffiti/vandalism 12%; ● Phys­i­cal assault 12%; ● Writ­ten mate­ri­als 11%; ● Non-ver­bal intim­i­da­tion 5%; ● Ver­bal threats 3%; ● Work­place dis­crim­i­na­tion 2%; ● Dis­crim­i­na­tion by author­i­ties 2%; ● Bul­ly­ing school 2%; ● Oth­er 1%.

For the 147 online cas­es, the report notes (on pages 109–110) the per­cent­age of cas­es from online plat­forms: Face­book (63%); news chan­nels, blogs and web­sites (24%); oth­er (includ­ed TV and radio episodes aired and stored Online) 10%. Insta­gram, Twit­ter, website/email were each 1%. It also notes that “Of the 147 inci­dents, 63% tar­get­ed the Mus­lim reli­gion and 33% were xeno­pho­bic tar­get­ing eth­nic­i­ty. … This includ­ed lan­guage that attacked Mus­lims with regards to the Qur’an, halal, Islam­ic dress, Islam­ic teach­ings and prin­ci­ples.”

The third Report of anti-Mus­lim inci­dents, cov­er­ing 2018 and 2019, notes (on page 4) the cat­e­gories and per­cent­ages of inci­dents as: “Of the 138 offline cas­es … The major­i­ty of the inci­dents were hate speech (46%) fol­lowed by dis­crim­i­na­tion (14%) and mul­ti­ple types of inci­dents at the same time (14%), then graffiti/vandalism (13%). Dis­crim­i­na­tion by author­i­ties (includ­ing at work­places and schools) increased from 6% to 14%, while phys­i­cal assault slight­ly dropped from 12% to 8% since the pre­vi­ous report. The sever­est cas­es con­sist­ed of 2% for prop­er­ty dam­age (e.g. burn­ing a mosque) and 3% for dam­age to indi­vid­u­als (e.g. hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion).” The report also notes (on page 90) that of the 109 online cas­es, “Islam­o­pho­bic inci­dents occurred most­ly on Face­book (86%), fol­lowed by email (6%), online media (6%) and Twit­ter (2%).”

Exam­ples of anti-Mus­lim Inci­dents

As record­ed in the three IRA reports, cov­er­ing 17 Sep­tem­ber 2014 to 31 Decem­ber 2019.

• Assault: “A preg­nant Mus­lim sit­ting with her friends in a café was bashed by a 44-year-old stranger on 20 Novem­ber 2019. Secu­ri­ty cam­era footage shows the per­pe­tra­tor walk­ing into the cafe and speak­ing to Rana Elas­mar briefly then start­ing to leap across the table and punch Ms Elas­mar sev­er­al times in the head and body with both fists and knock­ing her to the ground.” [2018–2019]
• Abuse: “…I was walk­ing with my head down and a group of young males yelled out ‘ISIS B****’ ‘go back to where you came from’ and snick­ered and said ‘shh or she’ll behead you.’ And fol­lowed me down the street” [2014–15]
• Abuse: “Today I wit­nessed two males around late 40s or so ver­bal­ly abus­ing a group of around six ladies wear­ing head­scarves, with their chil­dren… one of the men was yelling at them ‘it’s your own f***ing fault, you’re not want­ed here’ … (Case 64)” [2014–15]
• Abuse: “I had just fin­ished eat­ing at X Kababs and as I was leav­ing a group of young Aus­tralian men called me a “rag head” and a “sand nig­ger” and told me to “go back to where you came from” … (Case 126–17)” [2016–17]
• Dis­crim­i­na­tion: “a Mus­lim fam­i­ly faced dis­crim­i­na­tion by a flight atten­dant who per­sis­tent­ly ignored the fam­i­ly and board­ed every­one except the fam­i­ly regard­less of the long wait. “We stood there wait­ing patient­ly as she board­ed one after anoth­er and ignored us as we stood direct­ly in front of her…” (Case 200, 4 Jan 19).”
• Van­dal­ism: “a car was loaded with a petrol bomb and left in front of an Islam­ic school (Case 53–16).” [2016–17]
• Graf­fi­ti: “Ear­ly hours of 11 Sept, this [‘Remove Kebab’, ‘St Tar­rant’] was graf­fi­tied on front of Hol­land Park mosque. Swasti­ka also paint­ed over their sign.…” (Case 196, 11 Sep 19).”
• Stick­ers: “Stop the Islam­ic Inva­sion” [2016–17]; “No Islam­ic Takeover” “(Case 138–17)” [2016–17]; “No room for Islam­ic fas­cism” (Case 67, 21 Mar 18)”.
• Online: “post­ed on 25 March 2016” [screen­shot of com­ment “Islam­ic peo­ple have declared war on the West, so a dead moslem is a good moslem…” [2016–17]
• Online: [meme/image with text of: “Some can­cers must be treat­ed with radi­a­tion. Islam is one of them”] “Case 59, 15 Jul 19”.

Anti-Asian Inci­dents

The first Report on anti-Asian racism – COVID-19 Coro­n­avirus Racism Inci­dent Report/ – was pro­duced by the Asian Aus­tralian Alliance (AAA) and Osmond Chiu, Research Fel­low at the Per Capi­ta Think­tank, and pub­lished in July 2020, as a pre­lim­i­nary report. The report was moti­vat­ed by the racism against Asians in Aus­tralia aris­ing from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The inci­dents in this report were acquired through an “online sur­vey” which “con­sist­ed of a com­bi­na­tion of 13 mul­ti­ple-choice ques­tions and 7 qual­i­ta­tive ques­tions … host­ed on Sur­vey­Mon­key” which was “pro­mot­ed via social media, emails, links in online news­pa­per arti­cles and through part­ner organ­i­sa­tions.”

The first Report cov­ered the 2‑month peri­od from 2 April 2020 to 2 June 2020 and record­ed 377 inci­dents. Accord­ing to this report, (on pages 8–9) the “most com­mon type of racism expe­ri­enced (35%) was in the form of racial slurs/name call­ing” and “Almost 60% of inci­dents involved phys­i­cal or ver­bal harass­ment (racial slurs/name call­ing, phys­i­cal intim­i­da­tion, ver­bal threats, get­ting spat at)”. “Almost 10% of inci­dents occurred online, with 43% of these hap­pen­ing on Face­book.” The report has 13 cat­e­gories of inci­dents, and pro­vid­ed 15 exam­ples of inci­dents.

The sec­ond Report on anti-Asian racism – COVID-19 Racism Inci­dent Report Sur­vey Com­pre­hen­sive Report 2021 – by the AAA and Osmond Chiu, pub­lished in Sep­tem­ber 2021, cov­ered the 13-month peri­od from 3 June 2020 to 28 June 2021, record­ing 164 inci­dents. This report, being the com­pre­hen­sive report, also includ­ed the 377 inci­dents cov­ered in the first report – totalling 541 inci­dents record­ed in the 15-month peri­od from 2 April 2020 to 28 June 2021.

Cat­e­gories of inci­dents: The sec­ond report (on page 7) notes the types of inci­dents and per­cent­ages of the total num­ber (with respon­dents being able to select more than one cat­e­go­ry), in descend­ing order as:

“● Direct racial slur/name call­ing (“Go back to Chi­na”, “Stop eat­ing bats/dogs”, “Ching Chong” etc) (35.7%); ● Online harass­ment (25.7%); ● Mak­ing it out as a joke (13.1%) – i.e., mak­ing a racist tar­get­ed comment/statement and then laugh­ing it off and/or dis­miss­ing it as not being racist but just jok­ing around; ● Ver­bal threats (8.9%) – i.e. mak­ing a tar­get­ed racist comment/statement with ver­bal intent to cause harm; ● Get­ting spat/sneezed/coughed on (7.78%); ● Phys­i­cal intimidation/harassment (7.03%); ● Shun­ning (6.5%) – i.e. delib­er­ate avoidance/exclusion of Asians/Asian Aus­tralians; ● Work­place dis­crim­i­na­tion (2.2%).”

Cat­e­gories with inci­dents under 2% includ­ed: “● Barred from estab­lish­ment (Restau­rants, shops, bars etc); ● Barred from trans­porta­tion (Trams, bus­es, taxis, Uber etc); ● Graf­fi­ti-ed com­ments on shop fronts, car win­dows or the home; ● Denied access to essen­tial ser­vices (Med­ical … child­care etc); and ● Denied access to any rentals by owners/landlords.”

Exam­ples of anti-Asian Inci­dents:

As record­ed in the two AAA reports, cov­er­ing 2 April 2020 to 28 June 2021.

• Assault: “Attempt­ed to kick me. Called me an Asian slut and an Asian dog. Told me to go eat a bat. Threat­ened me with a knife. Spat in my face, get­ting spit in my left eye.”
• Abuse: “called me “you’re fuck­ing Asian, go eat bats and die alone. Don’t come to Aus­tralia.”” (Perth)
• Abuse: “lady … start­ed call­ing us “ching chong” and harass­ing us. She told us we will prob­a­bly eat our dogs and told us to “go back to Chi­na”.”
• Abuse: “Old woman with face mask approached me and stared at me for 5 sec­onds while I was wait­ing for the store to open. Her demeanour was aggres­sive and hate filled.” (Mel­bourne)
• Graf­fi­ti: “Graf­fi­ti blam­ing Asians for COVID-19 was spray paint­ed on the walls of a domes­tic res­i­dence…” (Syd­ney)
• Dis­crim­i­na­tion: “Cus­tomer refused to be served by myself or oth­er staff of south East Asian appear­ance stat­ing we were “sick” even though none of us had any signs of sick­ness.” (Mel­bourne)
• Barred: “The secu­ri­ty guard pro­ceed­ed to say … “I can’t under­stand you, I speak the lan­guage of this place straya not Chi­nese or what­ev­er you’re speak­ing. He pro­ceed­ed to shoo them away.” (Bris­bane)
• Shun­ning: “When our Uber arrived, the dri­ver who was of Euro­pean back­ground … refused us and said he didn’t want to catch COVID-19 because we were all Asian” (Syd­ney)
• Online: “I was com­ment­ing on a Face­book post on a news site about the racism com­ing out of the baby milk for­mu­la report­ing, and some­one replied under my com­ment: “Stu­pid Chi­nese, deport them, no more Chi­nese wel­come in Aus­tralia”.”
• Online: “A friend shared a post high­light­ing the recent con­cerns over COVID-19. On com­ment­ing, a friend of theirs start­ed to abuse me and all Chi­nese, stat­ing that we should all die and go to hell.”

Con­clu­sion

It is to be not­ed that these 3,522 inci­dents are only those that were report­ed to the three com­mu­ni­ty report­ing organ­i­sa­tions. There are many oth­er anti-Jew­ish, anti-Mus­lim and anti-Asian inci­dents that were unre­port­ed. Under-report­ing of inci­dents is a major prob­lem all tar­get­ed com­mu­ni­ties face, both here and over­seas. All those tar­get­ed by hate inci­dents need to report such inci­dents to the appro­pri­ate body.

In addi­tion, inci­dents against oth­er tar­get­ed com­mu­ni­ties – eth­nic, reli­gious, gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ty, dis­abil­i­ty and oth­ers – go unre­port­ed due to the lack of an organ­i­sa­tion which takes reports for these com­mu­ni­ties, and as a result, there is no data on hate inci­dents against these oth­er com­mu­ni­ties. It is to be hoped that oth­er tar­get­ed com­mu­ni­ties also estab­lish their own nation­al data­base sys­tems for report­ing and doc­u­ment­ing hate inci­dents.

At this stage, the only hard data on the num­ber of hate inci­dents occur­ring in Aus­tralia is through com­mu­ni­ty reports such as those by the ECAJ, IRA, and AAA. The hate inci­dent data by these tar­get­ed com­mu­ni­ties can be used by human rights bod­ies, police, leg­is­la­tors and oth­ers to for­mu­late poli­cies and prac­tices towards coun­ter­ing hate inci­dents.

As more peo­ple report hate inci­dents to exist­ing report­ing bod­ies, and as oth­er tar­get­ed com­mu­ni­ties devel­op a report­ing mech­a­nism for hate inci­dents, then the more accu­rate and clear­er the pic­ture becomes of the state of hate inci­dents in Aus­tralia.

Julie Nathan is the Research Direc­tor at the Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry

Dis­claimer: the author of this arti­cle is also the author of the ECAJ Report on Anti­semitism, since 2013