My name is Giridharan Sivaraman. It is a privilege speak to you here today -- as Commonwealth Race Discrimination Commissioner - on the 50th anniversary of the Racial Discrimination Act.
I wish to acknowledge the Dharug people, the traditional custodians of the land we are meeting on and pay my respects to elders past and present. I'd like to extend those respects to any Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people here today.
The passing of the Racial Discrimination Act, or RDA as it is also known, was a powerful moment in Australian history. Coming just after the abolition of the White Australia Policy, it was a pivotal milestone in our journey to a better society.
50 years later, when we think about the society, we aspire to have for ourselves, loved ones and future generations, I'm sure it is one founded on equality, dignity, and respect. These are values that the RDA was predicated upon, and values we promote and hold dear as a society.
Yet, to be denied equality, dignity and respect… That is central to the experience of those who are subjected to racism.
For me, as a non-First Nations person, but who has lived experience of racism and is leading anti-racism work, it's important to understand the difference between the racism someone like me suffers, and that which is suffered and has been suffered for 238 years by First Nations people. The racism First Nations people suffered and continue to suffer is also a denial of equality, dignity and respect. But in addition, it is a denial of self-determination and sovereignty which included the taking of their land by settlers before me. And I, as a settler migrant, have benefited from that denial of sovereignty. I have benefited from the taking of their land. Therefore, it is a small but important step for me to acknowledge I'm on country. It is also why I firmly believe there can be no racial justice on this land without First Nations justice.
If racism is the denial of respect, then fighting against racism in all its forms is an act of respect. It is a courageous act of love.
For those of us who suffer racism and also advocate for racial justice, our lived experience is undoubtedly a factor in our motivation to do so. But it is never the only one. Our efforts are driven by wanting a better future without racism -- beyond just us and our families - but for everyone. I'm sure that anyone here today who has been subjected to racism never wants that experience to happen to anyone else. It's something I hear a lot from people around me: "I hope no one else ever has to go through what I did." And fundamentally, this all comes down to respect for others. A respect which also motivates those who have never experienced racism -- our friends, colleagues, and many of you today - to join us in our united mission against racism. The respect for all of us, simply as human beings upon this earth. And the conviction that no one deserves to be treated differently based on what they look like or where they come from.
In 1975, former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam expressed this conviction at the RDA's proclamation. He said our nation must "spell out in enduring form ... the principle that all Australians, whatever their colour, race or creed, are equal before the law and have the same basic rights and opportunities." This was aligned with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. When the Whitlam Government passed the RDA in 1975, it gave effect to Australia's obligations under this convention and was a landmark moment in our history for many reasons.
The RDA was not only the first Commonwealth law explicitly outlawing racial discrimination, although that is significant in itself. It was also the first Commonwealth law that focused on human rights and discrimination in general. With the White Australia Policy only recently abolished at the time the law was passed, the RDA set a new vision for Australian society that sought to shake off the racial segregation that had defined it.
Over the last five decades, the RDA has made many strides in improving racial equality. It has helped shine a spotlight on wage theft of Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders, provided remedy pathways for people who've experienced racial hatred, and invalidate laws that discriminated against First Nations people's land rights. It also set a precedent for similar anti-discrimination laws around age, sex, and disability that were passed in the years that followed.
In 1973, before the RDA had passed and only a few weeks after the Bill itself had been introduced into Parliament, Whitlam gave a speech in Canberra for the United Nations Association on Human Rights Day.
He described the bill as: "an important part of the government's efforts to ensure that the Aboriginal people of Australia and the people who have migrated to this country are truly equal before the law and are able to participate in Australian life on equal terms with the rest of the Australian community"
And that it would: "complement the policies which we are endeavouring to pursue in establishing Aboriginal land rights and improving the general well-being of the Aboriginal community."
It is pertinent here, and deeply saddening, to note that there have been two Aboriginal deaths in custody in the Northern Territory in the last few weeks alone. These stories so full of grief, loss and anger are tragedies that occur only too frequently for Aboriginal communities.
And while we gather here today to talk about the 50th anniversary of the RDA and its value -- we must also recognise the shortcomings of our current legal frameworks, the structural racism that persists within our legal and justice systems, and how much further we have to go.
In consultations for the Commission's National Anti-Racism Framework, First Nations participants told us that they face racism at every point of interaction in the legal and justice system. Few issues can paint as vivid a picture of the incredibly deep and insidious nature of racism embedded within these systems than Aboriginal deaths in custody. It shows us how it can manifest in the most fatal form of all - the loss of precious life. And in doing so, the system fails its most basic obligation… to protect all of us equally under the law.
Our consultations showed that racism manifests in all aspects of people's lives in Australia. It is an uncomfortable truth that we need to face as a nation. Whether it be in education, health, justice, media or workplaces, it is everywhere. It is within our systems and institutions. That is the reality of people and communities affected by racism. There is nothing casual about the racism that people experience. It can involve slurs, name calling, racist jokes and other interpersonal racism, which is particularly prevalent online. But it's much more systemic than that. It's the experience of applying for 10 jobs and not getting an interview and then changing your name to being more Anglo and getting an interview straight away. It's the feeling of not being culturally safe in the workplace, of not having your overseas experience recognised, of not being seen as the right cultural fit for leadership. It's not being believed when you seek medical help, and for some First Nations communities, dying of diseases that were eradicated in the rest of population decades ago. It's about not being represented in the media. Or if you are represented it's either tokenistic or negatively. It's about being failed by an education system where racism erodes your self-worth and you have no one you trust to whom you can complain.
It is clear that we still have a long way to go to realise Whitlam's dream, and the dreams of all of us who aspire to live in a society free from discrimination.
It is now 50 years on, and Australia and the world have changed profoundly. 50 years ago, I wasn't even born. 50 years ago, racially segregated apartheid was still legal in South Africa. 50 years ago, people couldn't even imagine how we live now - with the freedoms we enjoy, AI at our fingertips and no physical money in our wallets. Life as we know it has evolved rapidly, and the legal instruments once used to protect us should also evolve.
In the road towards an anti-racist future, the case for reform also goes beyond our legal frameworks. In the excerpt from Whitlam's UN speech in Canberra, Whitlam described the RDA as "an important PART of the government's effort" that would "complement policies" towards the unified goal of tackling racism.
In November last year the AHRC released the National Anti-Racism Framework. That provided a roadmap to eliminating racism in Australia. There are recommendations for policy and law reform, including to the RDA, which I'll come to, but importantly, the Framework goes far further, including recommending a National Anti-Racism Taskforce. I know we are talking about one particular law today, but in reality, eliminating racism requires far more than that. We need legal reform across many areas, workplace laws, migration and citizenship laws, health laws and social media regulation just to name a few.
We need to build racial literacy, truth-telling about some of the horrors of our colonial past domestic implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People and most importantly, community led solutions.
As to the RDA itself, first and foremost, we need a positive duty to eliminate racial discrimination. The Act suffers from the same problem that much of our anti-discrimination law suffers from. It requires the victims of racism, who are often traumatised, under resourced and overwhelmed and with limited power to bring a complaint. It requires harm to be suffered before action can be taken. In workplaces in particular, we need a national inquiry to ascertain the full extent of racism and how it would be remedied by a positive duty to eliminate it.
We need better protection against religious discrimination. The Act's limitations have led to arbitrary outcomes where some religious groups are protected, and others are not.
We should adopt the position that exists in the adverse action provisions of the Fair Work Act, where the onus is on the respondent to prove they didn't do the act complained off for unlawful reasons. This recognises the usually significant differences in resourcing to pursue complaints.
There is also a need to rework the special measures provisions in section 8 - so that a process of consultation and consent with the people impacted by the measure is a requirement for a valid special measure.
As I reflect, I believe the significance of the RDA is more than its achievements as a landmark legal instrument. Its significance is also what it has represented: Australia's legal commitment to racial equality, and the recognition that eliminating racism requires meaningful action, not just good intentions. That too, is the foundation of the National Anti-Racism Framework, which provides a whole of society guide for meaningful action against racism.
And in many ways, I believe the RDA was an incredible expression of respect.
Respect was actually a theme of Prime Minister Albanese's Press Club Address last week. He declared his vision for Australia as a "society that is a microcosm for the world where all are respected and valued and our diversity is recognised as a strength." I think we're already halfway there. Our population is highly diverse, with one in three of us being born overseas.
I described the fight against racism as a courageous act of love. Bell Hooks, African-American writer and social activist expressed that "Love is an action, never simply a feeling." It requires intent and deliberate decisions in the ways we treat others, show care and take accountability. And there cannot be love without respect. So today I call on all of us to begin seeing respect as an action.
The road to an anti-racist future does require significant systemic reform. However, every single one us still has the opportunity, and power, to add our own bricks in the road ahead. In fact, real systems change relies on us building this unified and strong foundation together.
Let's each commit to respect as an action, with courage and intent, and use it as our north star to guide the decisions we make in our institutions, workplaces, and everyday lives. If we do, I believe the vision of Albanese, Whitlam, and indeed so many of us, can move from rhetoric to reality.
Thank you.
