An Australian police officer who allegedly made a Nazi salute at a Victorian police academy in October last year will not be charged. This raises significant questions about our Australian justice system on matters of discrimination and racially divisive rhetoric, behaviour, and speech.
Are we hard enough on racism in Australia? Of the States that have criminal codes, Western Australia has some of the stronger laws against racism, though they are dependent on those who incite or conduct extreme racial violence.
Racism kills. That is a fact of history, and a present reality. It is beyond doubt that governments, institutions, and other organisations have the potential to carry out the most diabolical racial policies in our world, but the harms posed by racist behaviour and institutional injustices have also claimed lives.
In Australia, people who find themselves the targets of everyday racism on the streets, or in institutions, are essentially powerless unless they have the financial and legal capital to prosecute in our courts.
Recently, Professor Emma Garlett published a brave and damning criticism of the sickening racism in the Australia Day debate, and the harms it has caused her, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander First Nations Australians on the whole.
"My whole life, I have watched as my people are kicked and trodden on…" she told the West Australian early this year.
There is no debate that Australia has a racist past, present, and future. White Australia policy often targeted Asian immigration due to the regional geographic realities of Australia's place in the world, and Britain's obsession with a 'whites-only' population.
2024 data indicates Asian and First Nations Australians remain priority targets of racism and its perpetrators today. According to the same data, other major target groups of racism and its perpetrators include European, Middle Eastern, African, and Jewish Australians with a fixation on migrant status as a major political cause for prejudicial targeting, harassment, and unfair treatment.
If the Commonwealth wants to lead on this matter, and reflect Australia's values of equal opportunity and a fair go, then significant consultation needs to begin with communities, organisations, and appropriate advocacy groups to bring recommendations on legal reform.
Australia is far from the ideal reality of widespread and universal condemnation of racism across all major parties and institutions recommended by the United Nations and Australian Human Rights Commission.
Jesse J. Fleay is a Noongar writer and research specialist across major policy areas. His doctoral thesis explores a model for an Australian republic, along with calls to enact a Voice to Parliament for First Nations Australians. He believes in justice, and fairness in society and only works with people committed to First Nations people, and their self-determination. Views expressed are his own.
