Racism Against First Nations Peoples Is a Test of Australia’s Democratic Maturity

Racism is not only a matter of offensive words or individual bad conduct. It shapes who gets protection, whose evidence people believe, whose health institutions safeguard, and who has real power in decisions affecting their lives. Australia can address it—but only by treating First Nations leadership, truth-telling and institutional accountability as the starting point rather than the afterthought.

Australia’s national story often reaches for the language of fairness. That aspiration matters. But it rings hollow for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples when racism remains an ordinary feature of daily life—in a shop, a classroom, a hospital, a workplace, a police interaction, a news feed, or public debate about Indigenous rights.

The evidence is not an invitation to pity, and readers should not use it to portray First Nations communities through a deficit lens. It is an invitation to responsibility. Systems, cultures and choices create and maintain racism; systems, cultures and choices can therefore change it. First Nations peoples themselves can most effectively lead that change.

What the evidence says

The scale of reported experience should end any suggestion that racism is rare or merely anecdotal. Reconciliation Australia’s 2024 Australian Reconciliation Barometer found that 54% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander respondents had experienced racism, compared with 39% in 2014. It also found that younger respondents reported especially high exposure: 63% of those aged 18–24 and 68% of those aged 25–34 had experienced at least one form of racial prejudice in the preceding six months. These are survey results, not a measure of every incident; nevertheless, they describe a persistent and worsening social reality that public institutions cannot dismiss. (Reconciliation Australia, Racism and First Nations Peoples)

Racism is also a health issue. In the Indigenous-led Mayi Kuwayu study, ANU researchers analysed responses from more than 8,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults and found associations between discrimination and poorer mental, physical and cultural wellbeing. The reported associations included psychological distress, anxiety, depression, pain, lower life satisfaction, heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes; adverse outcomes became more common with greater reported discrimination. The researchers also caution that people often under-report racism and that their analysis did not capture systemic and structural racism. That caution strengthens, rather than weakens, the case for action. (ANU, Racism linked to poor health among Indigenous Australians)

This is why a serious anti-racism agenda belongs in health policy, not only in complaints processes. Cultural safety, respectful care and the authority of Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations are practical conditions for equitable care. The National Agreement on Closing the Gap expressly recognises that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled services achieve better results, employ more First Nations people and that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people often prefer them to mainstream services. (Closing the Gap, Priority Reform Two)

The justice system supplies another urgent measure of inequality. At 30 June 2025, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people accounted for 17,432 prisoners—37% of all prisoners in Australia—and their age-standardised imprisonment rate was 2,500 per 100,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults. (Australian Bureau of Statistics, Prisoners in Australia, 2025) In 2024–25, 33 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people died in custody, the largest annual number since 1979–80, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology’s National Deaths in Custody Program. (Australian Institute of Criminology, Largest number of Indigenous deaths in custody since 1979–80)

No single statistic can explain the life of any person, community or case. Nor should people casually attribute deaths in custody to one cause. But such figures make clear that we cannot regard racial inequality in justice as historical residue. It is present-tense public policy.

The broader Closing the Gap picture reinforces that conclusion. The Productivity Commission’s 2025 Annual Data Compilation Report assessed only four of 19 socioeconomic targets as on track; adult imprisonment, out-of-home care, early childhood development and suicide were among the targets continuing to worsen. (Productivity Commission, Closing the Gap Annual Data Compilation Report, July 2025) A country committed to equality should find that result intolerable—not as a reason to blame First Nations people, but as a reason to change how governments exercise power.

Racism is now amplified, not confined

Digital platforms have widened the reach and speed of racial hatred. eSafety’s research found that adults in targeted groups—including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults—were more likely to see online hate (41%) and to experience it personally (24%). Less than half of targeted adults who encountered such hate took action, while those who experienced it most commonly identified social media as the setting. (eSafety Commissioner, New findings show online hate spreads harm far and wide)

These figures do not mean that every disagreement online is hate. They do mean that platforms cannot credibly leave safety to people who are already absorbing the harm. Better reporting tools, clear enforcement, transparent moderation data and meaningful consultation with First Nations communities are minimum expectations. Platform design choices—recommendation systems, frictionless sharing, opaque reporting and inconsistent enforcement—are policy choices. We should treat them as such.

The public debate surrounding the 2023 Voice referendum demonstrated the stakes. The 2023–24 Call It Out report, based on 453 validated reports that people submitted to its voluntary First Nations racism register, found that incidents connected to the referendum appeared in nearly one in five reports. This does not establish a national prevalence rate or prove that every view people held during the referendum was racist. It does, however, document how a constitutional debate became a setting in which many First Nations people and witnesses reported heightened hostility, misinformation and abuse. (UTS Jumbunna Institute, “Brave and compelling narratives” captured in racism report)

The need for care is not theoretical. In January 2026, WA Police alleged that a 31-year-old man threw a homemade improvised explosive device into a crowd of about 2,500 people at a public rally in Perth’s Forrest Place. The WA Joint Counter Terrorism Team subsequently said it was investigating the incident as a potential terrorist act. Those matters remain matters for the justice process; the established public fact is that people gathering peacefully faced grave danger. (WA Government, Charges—Forrest Place incident; Australian Federal Police, WA JCTT investigating Australia Day incident)

In 2025, dozens of men stormed Melbourne’s Camp Sovereignty, a culturally significant site where First Nations people had maintained a vigil for ancestral remains. In a Senate statement, the Minister for Indigenous Australians described people at the camp being beaten and the Aboriginal flag being stomped into mud, and condemned the attack. (Senator Malarndirri McCarthy, Senate Statement—Camp Sovereignty) We must describe these events with precision and respect for due process. People cannot treat racial hatred as harmless speech when it creates fear, normalises violence or threatens collective safety.

From consultation to shared power

Australia has no shortage of reports, frameworks or eloquent acknowledgements. The deficit is implementation and power-sharing.

The Australian Human Rights Commission’s National Anti-Racism Framework sets out 63 recommendations across law, justice, health, education, media, workplaces and data. It is explicitly First Nations-centred: Australia cannot separate racial justice from the injustice of colonisation, unceded sovereignty and the denial of self-determination. (Australian Human Rights Commission, National Anti-Racism Framework)

The framework’s premise deserves to guide public debate. Asking those targeted by racism to be more resilient, more patient or more persuasive does not resolve it. Governments, employers, schools, health services, media organisations and platforms resolve it when they accept responsibility for changing the conditions that enable it.

The National Agreement on Closing the Gap already contains this logic. Priority Reform Three commits governments to identify and eliminate institutional racism, embed cultural safety, work in partnership with First Nations organisations and make funding more transparent. (Closing the Gap, Priority Reform Three—Transforming Government Organisations) The task is to make those commitments real: measurable implementation, public reporting, durable funding and genuine authority for communities—not episodic consultation after governments have effectively made decisions.

Truth-telling belongs in this work. It is not a ritual of national self-reproach. It is a condition of honest civic life: understanding how dispossession, child removal, exclusion and violence have shaped present institutions and relationships. In its First Nations consultations, the Australian Human Rights Commission reported that those consulted regarded truth-telling, education about historical impacts and a commitment to self-determination as critical to dismantling racism. (Australian Human Rights Commission, Dismantling systemic racism—perspectives from First Nations peoples)

The same principle should inform the media. Research on mainstream opinion coverage has found that, even where language was more inclusive, that coverage under-represented Indigenous people and regularly omitted relevant historical and cultural context; non-Indigenous elite voices continued to dominate coverage of Indigenous issues. (All Together Now, UTS, Deakin University and CIRA, When inclusion means exclusion) Better reporting means more than avoiding obvious slurs. It means commissioning First Nations journalists and experts, treating community knowledge as expertise, supplying historical context, and resisting frames that reduce people to crisis, conflict or deficiency.

Rights that guide practice

Australia endorsed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in 2009. UNDRIP is not itself enforceable in Australian domestic law, but it remains a clear statement of the standards against which Australia should measure its conduct, including freedom from discrimination and the right to self-determination. The 2023 parliamentary inquiry recommended that Commonwealth policies and legislation concerning Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples be consistent with UNDRIP, that parliamentary human-rights scrutiny formally consider it, and that a national action plan be developed with First Peoples. (Parliament of Australia, Inquiry into the application of UNDRIP in Australia)

Legal protections also matter. Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 makes it unlawful, in certain circumstances, to act publicly in a way reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate a person or group because of race, colour or national or ethnic origin. Courts have interpreted the threshold as requiring “profound and serious” effects, not mere slights, while section 18D protects certain artistic, scientific and public-interest expression undertaken reasonably and in good faith. (Australian Human Rights Commission, Racial vilification under sections 18C and 18D)

Law alone will not prevent racism. Yet strong legal protections, accessible and culturally safe complaints pathways, and effective remedies are part of the architecture of dignity. The aim should be neither censorship nor symbolic reassurance. It should be the practical freedom of First Nations peoples to participate in public life without others degrading, threatening or excluding them because of who they are.

The choice before us

A credible national response would begin with several commitments:

• Fund First Nations-led solutions for the long term, particularly community-controlled health, legal, family, education and social services.
• Make governments accountable for eliminating institutional racism, using the Closing the Gap Priority Reforms as enforceable practice rather than aspirational language.
• Build safer digital and media environments, with transparent platform action, strong reporting pathways and substantially greater First Nations editorial authority.
• Protect rights and improve access to justice, including culturally safe routes to report racism and sustained support for racial-vilification protections.
• Advance truth, education and self-determination together; First Nations communities and the standards in UNDRIP should guide this work.

None of this asks Australia to lower standards. It asks Australia to meet them. We measure a democracy not by how confidently it praises equality, but by whether people can live it. Confronting racism against First Nations peoples is therefore not a niche policy issue or a test of personal goodwill. It is a test of Australia’s democratic maturity.

Sources

1. Reconciliation Australia, 2024 Australian Reconciliation Barometer: Racism and First Nations Peoples — https://www.reconciliation.org.au/publication/2024-australian-reconciliation-barometer-racism-and-first-nations-peoples/
2. Australian National University, Racism linked to poor health among Indigenous Australians — https://nceph.anu.edu.au/news-events/news/racism-linked-poor-health-among-indigenous-australians
3. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Prisoners in Australia, 2025 — https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/crime-and-justice/prisoners-australia/latest-release
4. Australian Institute of Criminology, Largest number of Indigenous deaths in custody since 1979–80 — https://www.aic.gov.au/media-centre/news/largest-number-indigenous-deaths-custody-1979-80
5. Productivity Commission, Closing the Gap Annual Data Compilation Report, July 2025 — https://www.pc.gov.au/closing-the-gap-data/annual-data-report/2025/
6. eSafety Commissioner, New findings show online hate spreads harm far and wide — https://www.esafety.gov.au/newsroom/media-releases/new-findings-show-online-hate-spreads-harm-far-and-wide
7. UTS Jumbunna Institute, “Brave and compelling narratives” captured in racism report — https://www.uts.edu.au/news/2025/03/brave-and-compelling-narratives-captured-racism-report
8. WA Government, Charges—Forrest Place incident — https://www.wa.gov.au/government/announcements/charges-forrest-place-incident
9. Australian Federal Police, WA JCTT investigating Australia Day incident — https://www.afp.gov.au/news-centre/media-statement/wa-jctt-investigating-australia-day-incident
10. Senator Malarndirri McCarthy, Senate Statement—Camp Sovereignty — https://ministers.pmc.gov.au/mccarthy/2025/senate-statement-camp-sovereignty
11. Australian Human Rights Commission, National Anti-Racism Framework — https://humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-11/NARF_Full_Report_FINAL_DIGITAL_ACCESSIBLE.pdf
12. Closing the Gap, Priority Reform Two—Building the Community-controlled Sector — https://www.closingthegap.gov.au/national-agreement/national-agreement-closing-the-gap/6-priority-reform-areas/two
13. Closing the Gap, Priority Reform Three—Transforming Government Organisations — https://www.closingthegap.gov.au/national-agreement/national-agreement-closing-the-gap/6-priority-reform-areas/three
14. Australian Human Rights Commission, Dismantling systemic racism—perspectives from First Nations peoples — https://humanrights.gov.au/about/news/media-releases/dismantling-systemic-racism-perspectives-first-nations-peoples
15. All Together Now, UTS, Deakin University and CIRA, When inclusion means exclusion — https://alltogethernow.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/When-inclusion-means-exclusion-report-2021.pdf
16. Parliament of Australia, Inquiry into the application of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Australia — https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/House_of_Representatives/About_the_House_News/Media_Releases/Report_released_on_inquiry_into_the_application_of_the_UNDRIP_in_Australia
17. Australian Human Rights Commission, Racial vilification under sections 18C and 18D of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 — https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/race-discrimination/projects/glance-racial-vilification-under-sections-18c-and-18d-racial