{"id":682689,"date":"2026-05-20T09:37:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T09:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/682689\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T09:37:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T09:37:11","slug":"vein-of-racism-race-discrimination-commissioner-accuses-one-nation-and-coalition-of-scapegoating-immigrants-australian-immigration-and-asylum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/682689\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Vein of racism\u2019: Race discrimination commissioner accuses One Nation and Coalition of scapegoating immigrants | Australian immigration and asylum"},"content":{"rendered":"

One Nation and the federal opposition are \u201cdehumanising\u201d and \u201cscapegoating\u201d immigrants while drawing on a \u201cdeep vein of racism\u201d, Australia\u2019s federal race discrimination commissioner says.<\/p>\n

Giridharan Sivaraman<\/a> made the comments as part of a panel discussion at a Brisbane seminar on human rights<\/a>, hosted by the state\u2019s human rights commission.<\/p>\n

Asked what his priority issues were, Sivaraman said the country was facing \u201ca very pronounced political fault line\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn one side of that fault line you have two parties, a populist party and now the federal opposition, who are dehumanising, scapegoating migrants,\u201d he said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Together, they encouraged people to blame migrants for everything from the housing crisis and traffic to the cost of milk, he said.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThat is implicitly racist, because \u2026 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\u2019s always existed from the time of colonisation\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis notion that some people belong here more than others or some people are superior to others.\u201d<\/p>\n

Announcing a new policy on immigration last month, the opposition leader, Angus Taylor, said \u201cmany\u201d migrants would be a \u201cnet drain\u201d on Australia<\/a> and announced that his approach would be to \u201cdiscriminate based on values\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"AngusAngus Taylor unveils plan to dramatically cut number of migrants in budget reply speech \u2013 video<\/p>\n

Immigration was also a centrepiece of his budget reply speech last week<\/a>. He proposed reducing overall numbers by using a cap based on housing construction and banning non-citizens from schemes like jobseeker, the age pension, and the NDIS.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is about mass migration<\/a> running ahead of the homes, roads, hospitals, schools and services Australia can provide,\u201d Taylor said in the speech to parliament.<\/p>\n

Sivaraman said that over the next two years, he expected an escalation in \u201cthe racism that accompanies\u201d blaming immigrants, posing a \u201csignificant issue\u201d for his work.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only way we\u2019ll actually deal with that – I think that racism, effectively – is to build class solidarity \u2026 between black, brown, and white people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause until you can convince a white worker that it\u2019s in their interest to combat racism – that racism is actually one of the causes of their inequity – you\u2019re not going to build solidarity\u201d.<\/p>\n

In response to the comments, Taylor said: \u201cThis is the government\u2019s failure, not that of migrant communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think migration is incredibly important to this country. It always has been and it always will be.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s no wonder young Australians can\u2019t get into a home. Labor is not only exceeding their own migration targets every year, they\u2019re not even meeting their housing targets. They\u2019re building about 70,000 houses a year under their target.\u201d<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Senator Pauline Hanson<\/a> denied that the party was racist or populist or had dehumanised or scapegoated migrants.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have a problem with migrants, we don\u2019t, and we\u2019re not anti-migration,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe advocate lower immigration to reduce demand for housing in this country.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One Nation and the federal opposition are \u201cdehumanising\u201d and \u201cscapegoating\u201d immigrants while drawing on a \u201cdeep vein of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":682690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-682689","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\/682689","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=682689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/682690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}