{"id":636800,"date":"2026-04-28T19:10:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T19:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/636800\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T19:10:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T19:10:13","slug":"australias-rising-racism-problem-under-microscope-yass-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/636800\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia’s rising racism problem under microscope | Yass Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AHRCAHRC president Hugh de Kretser says levels of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia have increased. Photo: Dan Himbrechts\/AAP PHOTOS<\/p>\n

Australia’s growing challenges with racism and anti-Semitism will take centre stage at the launch of a new scorecard on human rights.<\/p>\n

The Australian Human Rights Commission president Hugh de Kretser will deliver the first annual assessment of human rights in Canberra on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The assessment brings to light Australia’s performance across a range of fields, including democratic standards.<\/p>\n

There’s no escaping the threat to social cohesion that racism presents, Mr de Kretser told AAP.<\/p>\n

“There’s been a rise in racism across Australia following the failed Voice referendum, and following the 7 October attacks and the war in Gaza,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We’ve seen affected communities in Australia experience greater racism culminating in the Bondi attacks against the Jewish community, but also Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian racism, anti-Arab racism and more.”<\/p>\n

Many of these experiences are documented the AHRC’s “Seen and Heard” report<\/a>, published earlier this month, documenting the “sharp rise” in “terrifying” racism from October 2023.<\/p>\n

The report details shocking everyday experiences of Australians being abused, including a Jewish community member being called a “baby-killer”, and Islamic Australians questioning whether they can call their country their home.<\/p>\n

Mr de Kretser is likely to use the stage to once again call for the federal government to adopt the AHRC’s national anti-racism framework.<\/p>\n

That framework – which was funded by Anthony Albanese’s government and backed by the special envoys against anti-Semitism and Islamophobia – is yet to be implemented.<\/p>\n

Beyond the anti-Semitism and racism challenge, Mr de Kretser sees a “range of areas of where there has been regress on human rights where we urgently need to do better”.<\/p>\n

He names protest rights, the treatment of people in aged care and disabled people in institutional care, as areas where there have been “backsliding”.<\/p>\n

However, the national scorecard initiative is not wholly negative, with advances in protection to be acknowledged.<\/p>\n

New federal laws on hate speech, improved whistleblower protections and the scrapping of some secrecy laws would fall in that category.<\/p>\n

Australian Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AHRC president Hugh de Kretser says levels of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia have increased. Photo: Dan Himbrechts\/AAP PHOTOS Australia’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-636800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=636800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}