Australia’s race discrimination commissioner has warned politicians not to “exploit” racist rhetoric against migrants over the cost-of-living and housing crises, and said the country has seen the “bile of racism” spill out during heated political debates.
Giridharan Sivaraman said no politician, regardless of their political stance, should pit communities against one other – against the backdrop of a budget and election campaign where the cost-of living crisis, conflict in the Middle East, and rising antisemitism and Islamophobia have become political battlegrounds.
“Economic inequality shouldn’t be exploited by rhetoric that blames migration for what are usually far more complex and deeply entrenched problems,” he told Guardian Australia.
“We need to be really careful in our debates that we don’t dehumanise migrants in making arguments about economic inequality.”
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The Coalition has drawn a direct line between migration and the housing crisis, and Labor has been accused of “scapegoating international students” – by independent senator David Pocock and Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi – on the same issue.
This month, Peter Dutton told 2GB radio the Coalition would “cut immigration because Labor’s brought in a million people over two years and that has created the housing crisis”.
On Wednesday, the shadow treasurer, Angus Taylor, asked twice why Labor was bringing in “over 1.8 million immigrants over five years, while Labor’s housing crisis escalates”.
The immigration minister, Tony Burke, pushed the politics back to the opposition, retorting that they had refused to back the government’s legislation capping international students.
“[The Coalition] called for them [international student numbers] to be unlimited. This government has taken action,” he said.
“You don’t like it, do you? It is terribly sad, but it is the record you are responsible for.”
Sivaraman said during an economic crisis, it was often migrants who were left without social or economic support.
“What we should be doing is talking about how economic inequality exacerbates racism – rather than using economic inequality, exploiting it through racist rhetoric.”
Particularly around an election campaign, he said, he was concerned such rhetoric could inflame tensions across communities.
“If someone … uses racist rhetoric or dehumanises migrants to exploit an economic insecurity, that will lead to migrants and people of colour not being treated with equality, dignity and respect,” he said. “That’s what history shows us.”
Sivaraman’s comments followed a broader anti-migration debate across parliament in recent months, with calls from the Coalition to introduce a referendum to give politicians the power to deport criminal dual citizens, and to change the citizenship test to include questions on antisemitism.
On 19 March, spurred on after a video emerged of two Sydney nurses allegedly threatening Israeli patients, Dutton said it was time to “assert our values” by changing the test.
“If you give a pledge of allegiance to our country and it turns out that you hate our country, or you want to harm people in our country, what should be the consequence?”
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Community groups immediately criticised the policy, saying it was “exploiting” racial issues, as the Australian National Imams Council called the timing “opportunistic”.
Sivaraman warned against “pitting” different groups against each other.
“It’s really important that we acknowledge racism affects lots of different communities and it is a significant problem across Australia.
“It is not helpful to pit communities against each other and to have these notions that validating one person’s [experience of] racism invalidates someone else’s.”
Last year, Dutton’s Palestinian visa ban stance was labelled “racist” in parliament by the independent MP Zali Steggall. Dutton denied the accusation and described the remark as “offensive and unparliamentary”, and Steggall later withdrew it “to assist the house” – though she later told Guardian Australia she stood by her comments.
The opposition leader has continued to attack Labor over arrivals from Gaza since 7 October, alleging they have arrived without adequate checks.
“[The] minister [for home affairs, Tony Burke] is bringing in 3,000 people from a terrorist-controlled zone with no security checks,” he said on 13 March.
Speaking generally, Sivaraman said political debates such as those surrounding the voice referendum and Covid-19 had seen the “bile of racism” spill out into the public forum.
“Every time we have these ruptures in our society we see the bile of racism just pouring out,” he said.
“During Covid: anti-Asian racism; during the referendum: anti-First Nations racism; more recently: antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian [and] anti-Arab racism. Racism just keeps happening.”
