Australia race commissioner accuses One Nation, Coalition of racist immigrant scapegoating

Australia’s federal race discrimination commissioner has accused One Nation and the federal opposition of dehumanising and scapegoating immigrants, drawing on what he described as a “deep vein of racism.”

Giridharan Sivaraman made the comments Wednesday during a panel discussion at a Brisbane seminar on human rights hosted by the Queensland Human Rights Commission.

Asked about his priority issues, Sivaraman said the country faced “a very pronounced political fault line.”

“On one side of that fault line you have two parties, a populist party and now the federal opposition, who are dehumanising, scapegoating migrants,” he said.

Together, he said, they encouraged people to blame migrants for problems ranging from the housing crisis and traffic to the cost of milk.

“That is implicitly racist, because … the only signal as to whether someone is a migrant usually is the colour of their skin, or their name, or their accent, and it draws on this deep vein of racism that’s always existed from the time of colonisation,” Sivaraman said.

“This notion that some people belong here more than others or some people are superior to others.”

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor last month announced a new immigration policy, saying “many” migrants would be a “net drain” on Australia and that his approach would be to “discriminate based on values.”

Immigration was also a centrepiece of Taylor’s budget reply speech last week. He proposed lowering overall numbers using a cap based on housing construction and banning non-citizens from programs such as JobSeeker, the age pension and the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

“This is about mass migration running ahead of the homes, roads, hospitals, schools and services Australia can provide,” Taylor told Parliament.

Sivaraman said he expected an escalation over the next two years in “the racism that accompanies” blaming immigrants, posing a “significant issue” for his work.

“The only way we’ll actually deal with that – I think that racism, effectively – is to build class solidarity … between black, brown, and white people,” he said.

“Because until you can convince a white worker that it’s in their interest to combat racism – that racism is actually one of the causes of their inequity – you’re not going to build solidarity.”

In response, Taylor said: “This is the government’s failure, not that of migrant communities.

“We think migration is incredibly important to this country. It always has been and it always will be.

“But the numbers have been too high and standards to low. The numbers got up to 550,000 in a year and housing construction was going backwards.

“It’s no wonder young Australians can’t get into a home. Labor is not only exceeding their own migration targets every year, they’re not even meeting their housing targets. They’re building about 70,000 houses a year under their target.”

A spokesperson for Senator Pauline Hanson denied that One Nation was racist or populist or had dehumanised or scapegoated migrants.

“We don’t have a problem with migrants, we don’t, and we’re not anti-migration,” the spokesperson said.

“We advocate lower immigration to reduce demand for housing in this country.”