The International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has come and gone – its significance buried in the current global climate that is getting worse by the day. We are witnessing a volatile resurgence of far-right and neo-Nazi movements organising locally and globally. The spectre of an escalating war launched by the U.S.and Israel against Iran looms large, threatening to destabilise an entire world order as well as significantly impact our domestic landscape, now that our government has officially joined the war. All of this taking place against the backdrop of a worsening climate crises, ecocide and ongoing Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people, a genocide our government has been enabling for the last two and a half years.
On the World Justice Project’s fundamental rights index, Australia ranks 17th, well below countries like New Zealand, Canada, and the UK. The delusion that Australia is a harmonious and racism-free society peaked in 1999, when the Howard government rebranded the day as “Harmony Day,” a move that traded the important work of tackling systemic racism for the soft aesthetics of perceived multiculturalism. This trend continues today, as the Albanese government resists allocating the resources necessary to foster genuine equity and bring about concrete changes.
Refusing to name the problem, or to dedicate resources for creating the necessary environment for healthy debates and learning is a key barrier to moving forward and achieving progress on racial justice issues. For decades, successive governments have systematically de-prioritised racial justice, choosing optics over substance.
The last two years have been banner years for racism and extremism in Australia, marked with intense racial tensions, the mainstreaming of anti-immigrant sentiment. Groups like the National Socialist Network have moved white nationalist rhetoric from the fringes into the public square, often infiltrating rallies that frame economic anxieties through a xenophobic lens.
This period has been further marred by a spike in targeted and racially motivated violence; the December 2025 Bondi antisemitic terrorist attack and what ensued from politicisation and weaponisation of such tragic attacks against other racialised and marginalised communities. This served as a flashpoint for divisive rhetoric that created a hierarchy of racialised communities and pitted them against each other.
In January an improvised explosive device was thrown into a peaceful crowd of First Nations people and allies who gathered to commemorate Invasion Day, in Perth. This was followed by excessive police force on a group of Muslim men engaged in evening prayers during a peaceful protest against the visit of Israel’s president, in Sydney.
Senator Pauline Hanson’s incitement and Islamophobic remarks demonising Muslims have effectively mobilised and emboldened extremists to take actions against Muslims communities in different parts of the country; Lakemba in NSW, Perth, and most recently in Ballarat, Victoria. When political leaders use their platforms to dehumanise, they provide a permission slip for extremists to act.
Even more concerning is how this rhetoric is being baked into mainstream policy. Leaked Liberal Party documents proposed banning visa applications from 13 regions deemed “high-risk”, including Gaza, Lebanon, and Nigeria. Recently, the Albanese government has dipped into the same discriminatory handbook by passing a law that makes it easier to block entire “cohorts” of visa holders based on their country of origin, effectively legislating structural racism. We have seen this before with the shameful India travel ban during the pandemic; these policies don’t “protect borders,” they tear families apart.
An equally devastating reality was confirmed by the Australian Human Rights Commission. The Respect@Uni report revealed that racism isn’t an exception in our universities—it is the rule. Out of 76,000 staff and students, a staggering 70% have experienced indirect racism. For Palestinian and Jewish students, that number climbs to over 90%.
For too long, those in power have approached racism as a series of unfortunate isolated incidents. But we argue that when you combine inflammatory leadership, discriminatory migration policies, and foreign policies that violate international law – all in the context of settler colonialism, you get a system that perpetuates discrimination, regenerates racial tension and undermines social cohesion.
We simply cannot expect our foreign policies to not radiate domestically and influence our social fabric, especially when the Australian government joins unprovoked illegal US-Israel war against Iran, implicating Australians yet in another adventure that lacks legitimacy, clear strategic objectives or timeline, a step that countries like Canada and Spain have refrained from taking.
The current political climate isn’t the result of a series of unfortunate incidents. From the halls of Parliament to our local streets, racial tension is being stoked to fuel a climate where xenophobia, hostility toward migrants, and discrimination feel “normalised” and even politically strategic.
Democracy in Colour has spent years building a movement capable of shifting these narratives. Through campaigns like Migration with Dignity, Racism out of Politics, Climate Justice programs and our Anti-racism training, we continue to work hard for racial justice through an intersectional and holistic framework because we understand, as impacted communities, that until racism is tackled at the systemic level, we will just keep hopping from one headline to the next.
We don’t need a sanitised celebration of “harmony” in Australia. The monumental work of First Nations people in the state of Victoria around treaty and truth-telling is certainly a step in the right direction and is leading the way in what a decolonised and anti-racist alternative could look like. Addressing racism properly requires domestic as well as foreign policy shifts. Australia must develop an independent foreign policy that centres Australian national interests rather than replicating Trumpian and populist policies. Domestically it requires genuine systemic and structural reforms, starting with First Nations justice, economic, social and climate justice to build a world where we can thrive as a nation, communities and individuals.