National racial justice organisation, Democracy in Colour, warns that the federal government’s response to the anti-Muslim hate report relies too heavily on repackaging old programs rather than delivering the structural change and new resources needed to make communities safe.
Over the weekend, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese released the government’s formal response to Special Envoy Aftab Malik’s landmark anti-Muslim report. While the federal government has agreed to act on 35 of the 54 recommendations–including reviewing the Australian school curriculum to strengthen racial tolerance and new multicultural grants–several fundamental structural proposals have been left unanswered.
Alarmingly, the response fails to address the recommendations which were directed at the structural causes of anti-Muslim discrimination, including confronting anti-Muslim discrimination with the “equivalent urgency to other discriminatory practices, and provide it with the same rights, protections and legal recourse.” The government response also overlooked the report’s recommendation to “support the capacity building of existing community monitoring and reporting efforts”, a critical omission given that since October 2023, the Islamophobia Register has recorded a 650% increase in reported incidents nationwide.
“Given the current statistics, we argue that anti-Muslim hate is already normalised in Australia. A problem this deep cannot be solved with a grab-bag of expansions to existing programs. This does not equate to the urgent, structural intervention that Muslim communities have been calling for,” says Democracy in Colour National Director, Noura Mansour.
“The root of racism on this continent lies within its history of being built on stolen land. Addressing racism against all people of colour—including anti-Muslim hate—must go hand in hand with eradicating anti-First Nations racism and the structural violence directed against Indigenous communities,” Mansour adds.
Tackling racism requires a whole-of-society commitment to building a multicultural democracy where justice and safety belong to everyone, not just a privileged few. Democracy in Colour calls on the federal government to commit to the remaining 19 outstanding recommendations from the Special Envoy’s report.
Media Contact: Kristyn Maslog-Levis kristyn@democracyincolour.org