Australia's issues with racism, cultural diversity requires national review

She was asked whether Senator Pauline Hanson's comment that Faruqi should "piss off back to Pakistan" would be tolerated in any other workplace. Of course, it would not. Anyone making a comment like that in any Australian workplace would be disciplined and sanctioned.

Hanson later doubled down on her comments, saying: "I make the offer, as well, to take her to the airport."

Hanson made the suggestion following Faruqi's comments she couldn't mourn the Queen - "the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples. We are reminded of the urgency of treaty with First Nations, justice and reparations for British colonies and becoming a republic" - as Faruqi wrote on Twitter.

You could feel the emotion in Faruqi's response. "Senator Hanson has been doing this for decades without any sanctions, without any accountability," Faruqi said. "What kind of message does that send to the rest of the community. Here we are the so-called leaders of the country who are not willing to call out racism and hold the perpetrator accountable."

Faruqi has the lived experience of the impacts of colonisation. Her country of birth (prior to the partition of India) was ruled by the British for longer than Australia has been a federation.

In theory anyone can say what they please as long as they don't defame someone or breach national security laws. The point is Faruqi, more than most, had good grounds for her views, whether or not others agreed with her. It might be debated whether or not she chose the right moment to make the comment, but it is hard to argue with the merits of her commentary or at least her right to express the views she did. The right to hold different views is what we value in a democracy. But we should not be racially abused for holding them. It seems the same people who consistently argue for the right to make offensive and humiliating comments about race are the first to attack coloured people who speak their minds.

Faruqi's complaint against Hanson is now before the Australian Human Rights Commission. Even if her complaint is substantiated, the best she can expect is a mediated and likely insincere apology, judging by the depth of Hanson's feeling and her well-known attitudes about other races. This is because, more than 30 years since it was first created, Parliament has not seen fit to give the AHRC power to impose any other meaningful sanctions.

In an ironic twist, the Senate is considering Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus's bill which is intended to address the call from the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions Sub-Committee on Accreditation for a clear, transparent, merit-based and participatory selection and appointment process for the AHRC. During debate on the bill, independent MP Zoe Daniel said: "Well, process - wow! What a great thing to see: people being appointed based on merit rather than ideology."

During the worst of the pandemic, we heard reports of Chinese Australians and others being racially abused, yet nothing was done. Now we hear of allegations of racism towards young First Nations footballers and others at Hawthorn Football Club and soccer fans who booed the welcome to country and some who gave the fascist salute at the Australia Cup final. Then this week we heard the shocking stories of bullying and racism within the Queensland Police Service. All this while we try to convince some Australians why a Voice for our First Nation's peoples is overdue.

One cannot observe these events without realising parts of our society are broken. They have been so for decades. George Megalogenis in his excellent article asked the question: "How well do you know your country." It seems we don't know it well, at all. As he and others have observed, we have taken one step forward on gender, but two steps back on race.

We are not alone in having to deal with bigotry, yet defining moments in the history of other countries have at least been the catalyst for some action. But not so here. We continue to see repeated acts of racism but seem paralysed to act.

George Floyd's death in the United States in 2020, for instance, gave voice to the Black Lives Matter movement. Keeping his promise to Black voters, on his first day in office President Joe Biden signed an executive order committing his administration to advancing racial equity. He moved quickly to appoint the first African American woman to the Supreme Court and several minority groups to the nation's most senior courts and to other senior roles in his administration. This month he pardoned thousands of Americans convicted of minor marijuana possession because these arrests disproportionately impacted people of colour and low-income communities, serving to deepen existing structural inequalities.

Last month black civil servants in Canada filed an action in the United Nations, alleging systemic racism and discrimination in hiring and promotions within Canada's federal public service. The claimants hope the UN will call on Canada to develop specific targets for hiring and promoting Black workers.

Meanwhile, I had been watching Selma, a movie about Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement in the United States, when my wife walked in to tell me the news of the newest appointment to Australia's High Court. She knew I would be despondent. In over 120 years we have not managed to appoint a single First Nations person or person of colour to Australia's highest court and only one or two to its superior courts. I was particularly despairing having seen the struggles for racial equality in the United States contrasted with the dismal progress of First Nations Australians and people of colour back home in every public institution, the judiciary one of the worst. It is progress we have a majority of women judges on the High Court. However, not one person of colour appointed in over a century.

What is lost in the discussion is racism is not just about individual acts of offence, like in Faruqi's case, as painful as that may be. "What this does, is that it pokes and prods at the scars we already carry because of the incessant racism that is piled up on us. For me it was humiliating, insulting. It challenges my belonging to a place I have called home for 30 years," Faruqi said on Q&A.

It is about systems and power structures in society that disadvantage people of colour. That is why concrete actions, like in the United States are vital in disarming the institutional structures that hold back coloured people. It is one thing to introduce a bill establishing a national anti-corruption commission. However, Faruqi and the Hawthorn footballers can never complain to the commission about their treatment, even though discrimination is every bit an issue of integrity as any act of corrupt behaviour.

Recently in its blueprint for cultural diversity and inclusive leadership, the AHRC itself found that about 95 per cent of senior leaders in Australia have an Anglo-Celtic or European background. Although those who have non-European and Indigenous backgrounds make up an estimated 24 per cent of the Australian population, such backgrounds account for only 5 per cent of senior leaders. Cultural diversity is particularly low within the senior leadership of Australian government departments and Australian universities.

However, as the AHRC said, any notion of meritocracy, presumes a level playing field and it is questionable such a level playing field exists, given the significant under-representation of cultural diversity.

As the AHRC said: "In the highly mobile society we should expect of an egalitarian Australia, we should by now be seeing greater representation of cultural diversity in senior leadership. That there are only marginally higher levels of non-European cultural diversity ... underlines the unsatisfactory nature of the status quo."

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We find it easier to confront issues of gender, but not of race.

We have reached a tipping point in Australia's history. With more than half of the population with an overseas ancestry as the recent census shows, many from culturally diverse counties, we can no longer tolerate institutions and systems of government that work to diminish the contribution of First Nation's peoples and culturally diverse Australians.

It is time for a national review of the causes and solutions to Australia's problem with inclusion of culturally diverse Australians. In other words, its problem with race. If any other issue were as protracted and damaging as this, there would have been calls for a royal commission.