Australia’s Race Discrimination Commissioner, Giridharan Sivaraman, has called on the local government sector to act on racism in line with the National Anti-Racism Framework.
Mr Sivaraman (pictured) spoke in a video message to the Tackling Racism Together: Local Government Forum at Preston City Hall in Melbourne on Sunday, which saw the launch of a Model Anti-Racism Strategy for local government with the support of 43 community organisations
The Strategy is a free, ready-to-adopt strategy that any council in the country can use, published by the Anti-Racism Community Collective.
It gives councils a fully drafted strategy, 75 practical actions to choose from and step-by-step guidance to adopt it. It puts the Australian Human Rights Commission’s National Anti-Racism Framework into practice at the local level and covers all forms of racism, said Mr Sivaraman.
Forty-three community organisations have backed the strategy in less than two weeks – 27 with full endorsement and 16 in principle. They include the Jewish Council of Australia, Democracy in Colour, Hindus for Human Rights Australia, Women’s Health East, The Humanism Project, the Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies (CRIS) at Deakin University and the Australian Youth Affairs Coalition.
About 25 local government representatives attended the forum, hosted by the City of Darebin Council.
In his video message, Commissioner Sivaraman said: “Tackling racism must start at a local level. That is where you can have the most impact. But it means directly naming and confronting racism, not sweeping things under the carpet.”
“That means implementing the National Anti-Racism Framework and its recommendations in any area where you can, and there are many areas in which that framework can be applied by local government: in the provision of services, in the collection of data and in other areas of local life.”
In a statement at the close of the forum, he said: “The Model Anti-Racism Strategy for local government, developed by the Anti-Racism
Community Collective, is a great, practical initiative that shows how the Australian Human Rights Commission’s National Anti-Racism Framework can be applied at the local level.
“With racism climbing to unprecedented heights, causing harm to all Australians, we need to back whole-of-society interventions on the ground that allow each one of us to be safe, to thrive, or even, to just be.”
Madhavi Srinivasan, who launched the strategy for the Anti-Racism Community Collective, said councils are one of the best places to stop racism before it starts.
“No council has to start from scratch. This strategy is free and ready to adopt, and a council can begin with a few low-cost actions that change how it already works. We’re asking every council in Australia to pick it up and make it their own.”
Ohad Kozminsky, Community Engagement Director at the Jewish Council of Australia and a member of the Collective’s steering committee, said: “Racism harms every community it touches, whether it targets First Nations people, Jewish, Muslim, Arab, African or Asian Australians, or anyone else. We are all safer when we stand together against every form it takes.
“More than 40 organisations from very different communities have backed this strategy. That is a strong message to councils that their communities want them to act, and now they have the tools to do it.”
Find out more at antiracismstrategy.org/collective.
