Hon Jacinta Allan, Premier of Victoria

Ingrid Stitt MP, Minister for Multicultural Affairs

The Hon Natalie Hutchins MP, Minister for Treaty and First Peoples

The words ‘our’ and ‘we’ in this document refer to the Victorian Government.

Victorians are diverse in culture, ethnicity and faith. Victorians from culturally, ethnically and religiously diverse communities use different terms to describe themselves and their communities, and terms people use can also change over time.

In this strategy, we use the term ‘multicultural communities’ to collectively describe the diverse cultural and ethnic groups that make up Victoria. We also use the term ‘multifaith communities’ to refer to Victoria’s diverse religious and faith communities.

We recognise the diversity of First Peoples, communities and cultures throughout Victoria. While the terms ‘Koorie’ or ‘Koori’ are sometimes used to describe Aboriginal or First Peoples of southeast Australia, in this strategy we use the term ‘First Peoples’ to include all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples living in Victoria.

To end racism together, we need a shared language for how we describe racism and the communities and people harmed by it. When we talk about ‘racism and discrimination’ in this strategy, we mean this to include and refer to both racial and faith-based discrimination, given they are closely related.

We define other key terms throughout this strategy and in the glossary.

We are deeply proud to be launching Victoria’s anti-racism strategy and hope all Victorians will embrace their role in bringing the strategy’s vision to life.

We know that racism has serious health, social and economic impacts for people, communities and societies. Children and young people are particularly vulnerable to its harmful effects. Racism reduces our trust in one another and our overall sense of safety and wellbeing in the communities we live in.

With the world more digitally connected than ever before, global conflicts and crises can also threaten our sense of safety and cohesion in Victoria. The COVID-19 pandemic and recent conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine have shown that these crises often lead to more racism and discrimination locally. Recent efforts to advance self-determination, including the 2023 federal referendum on a constitutionally enshrined Voice to Parliament for First Peoples in Australia, have also been met with increased hate speech and racism against First Peoples.

Actions addressing racism and discrimination are now more important than ever – for First Peoples, for multicultural and multifaith communities and for all Victorians.

We will achieve our goals through actions to address and prevent racism and discrimination. This includes tailored activities for First Peoples and other specific communities.

We will prevent and tackle racism and discrimination throughout the lifetime of the strategy, including by:

• supporting Victorians affected by racism and discrimination
• putting in place important reforms to undo racism and discrimination in the ways we work with people and in the services and supports for Victorians
• partnering with Victorian communities to challenge racism and discrimination in all areas of life
• urging all Victorians to understand, challenge, report and reject racism wherever it occurs.

This strategy supports government-wide efforts to achieve fairness, safety and equity for all Victorians. This includes the Victorian Closing the Gap implementation plan and the Victorian Aboriginal affairs framework (VAAF). The VAAF is underpinned by a commitment to First Peoples self-determination. VAAF affirms self-determination as a human right, referring to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

This strategy also supports the Victorian Government Self-determination reform framework. The framework guides public service action to make self-determination possible, in line with the government’s commitment to the VAAF.

It also includes the Victorian Government’s response to:

• the work of the Yoorrook Justice Commission
• the Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-Vilification Protections
• strengthening anti-vilification laws.

We will take an intersectional approach, recognising how other forms of discrimination overlap with and can worsen experiences of racism for Victorians.

We will develop a monitoring and evaluation framework to measure the impact of the strategy on First Peoples, multicultural and multifaith Victorians across Victoria, including in regional and rural areas.

We will track progress, including across each of our priority goals.

Racism is a form of discrimination where a person or group of people are treated unequally because they belong (or appear to belong) to a particular ethnic group or race. Racism is based on the idea that some races are superior to others. Racism is always accompanied by power – the power to discriminate against others.

Race is not a biological or genetic fact. It is an idea created to sort people into ‘racial groups’ by:

• their skin colour or other physical traits
• the language they speak
• their cultural practices
• their religion.

This idea has been driven by historical and current forms of colonialism, with violence and ideology enforcing the idea of a racial hierarchy between groups.[8]

Categorisation like this is not always imposed on people from the outside. People may choose to identify with cultural or language groups based on common characteristics (including histories of oppression). When it is imposed on others by those with power to discriminate, it is called racialisation.

Racialisation is the act of assigning racial identities to people or groups based on their physical or cultural traits or characteristics. It can maintain stereotypes and lead to discrimination. How groups are racialised in a society can change over generations as power and influence shifts. Sometimes when new ethnic or cultural groups arrive in a community, the boundaries between racial groups are redrawn. This changes who is included in the dominant racial group.

Information about different types of racism is at Appendix 1.

Since the first acts of colonisation, institutional and systemic racism have been firmly fixed in government’s actions towards First Peoples. The government used laws and policies to try to:

• assimilate First Peoples into the general population
• deny First Peoples their connections to community, culture and Country.

Laws are framed and informed by the cultural, social and historical context they are developed in. The laws and policies that were used to dispossess and exclude First Peoples from social, economic and political life in Victoria were reinforced by racist beliefs about the inferiority of First Peoples. Such laws included:

• Aborigines Protection Act 1869 (Vic)
• Aborigines Protection Act 1886 (Vic).

Through these laws, First Peoples children were forcibly and cruelly removed from their families. We refer to the children subjected to these policies as the Stolen Generations. The displacement of successive generations of children has resulted in significant trauma. It also disrupted the passing down of traditional knowledge, oral traditions and cultural heritage for First Peoples.

State policies and legislation have had long-lasting effects on First Peoples, including ongoing and unequal intergenerational social and economic outcomes. For example, the 1997 Bringing them home report found that Stolen Generations were more likely to:

• face police attention as they reached adolescence
• suffer low self-esteem, depression and mental illness.

The report also found that Stolen Generations were almost always taught to reject their Aboriginality and Aboriginal culture. Instead, they were told to ‘think and act like a white person’.[9]

The impact of dispossession and colonisation on First Peoples in Victoria lives on in systems like child protection and justice. First Peoples continue to be over-represented in these systems.

As the Yoorrook Justice Commission has noted:

Colonisation, as implemented by colonial and later Victorian state authorities, created the structure, systems and conditions under which First Peoples continue to be subjected to harm and systemic injustice, as well as human and cultural rights violations.[10]

The government has taken significant steps to address the harm it has caused. Still, the pursuit of Treaty aims to:

• better address the widespread and enduring forms of interpersonal, institutional and structural racism affecting First Peoples
• provide the pathway for self-determination.

In April 2024 the Premier of Victoria’s statement to the Yoorrook Justice Commission noted that the Victorian Government recognises First Peoples’ ongoing resilience and strength in maintaining and protecting their connection to community, culture and Country.

Some groups of people in Australian society do not face racism or the harm that it causes. This can be described as a form of racial privilege.

Racial privilege does not necessarily mean somebody’s life is free from challenges. It means their opportunities will not be affected in the same way as someone from a racialised background. It is worth noting that many people still face racism and discrimination even with skin colour that is considered ‘white’.

For example, people with racial privilege can see people they identify with widely and positively represented in the media. They can assume they will not be denied a job opportunity or rental property, or be treated differently at school, at work, in health care or the justice system on the basis of race.

In Australia, beliefs in white superiority and the inferiority of other racial groups were reinforced through discriminatory policies. These policies privileged some and disadvantaged others and have lasting effects to this day. ‘Whiteness’ was cemented as the norm or default through policies that:

This strategy has been shaped by:

Understanding the experiences and extent of racism helps us understand why we need this strategy and where to focus our efforts.

We heard in consultations that public places like parks, streets, shopping centres and public transport are common settings for racism. Experiences included:

I have regularly experienced racial profiling by security. Despite dressing professionally and being friendly, a security guard without fail asks to inspect my bag, despite watching me carry things around the store to purchase them.
– Survey respondent

We also heard that people faced racism at sporting events from other players or spectators. Officials and community club staff were not always able or willing to step in.

A 2022 survey of Victorians found that 29% of people identified racism in sport as a big problem, with racial vilification often justified as a form of ‘sledging’ to put players off their game.[17]

There is a lack of mental health providers who can understand cross-cultural issues and the mental health impact of discrimination and racism. I have struggled to find a mental health provider who can empathise with my struggles due to psychologists and counsellors being very white and very upper middle class. As they have never experienced racism and discrimination, they think it doesn’t exist.
– Survey respondent

There needs to be trust in the community in the institutions and systems. In the [COVID-19] pandemic response, people were being asked to trust a system that they had no engagement with. When it was the trusted organisations coming to talk to people about testing and quarantine, then there was traction in the community. What works is support and investment in those institutions with community trust.
– Health consultation participant

Racism and discrimination in employment takes a variety of forms.

Unequal access to work opportunities because of institutional, structural and interpersonal racism stops people from enjoying equal economic participation and earning higher incomes. This can cement inequality for people from racialised communities and their families, making it harder to:

Limited employment opportunities can also affect a person’s sense of identity and self-worth.

Employers may not recognise overseas skills and qualifications, or they might avoid hiring qualified candidates without Australian work experience.[93] As a result, migrant workers are often over-represented in insecure and poorly paid employment. Up to 16% of recent migrants are paid less than the national minimum wage compared with up to 9% of all Australian workers.[94]

International student graduates are likely to experience qualification–employment mismatch and have significantly poorer employment outcomes compared with their domestic counterparts. More than half of Temporary Graduate visa holders end up in jobs at the lowest skill levels despite being qualified for the top skill level.[95]

Multicultural women, including women from refugee backgrounds, have a significantly lower rate of workforce participation (47.3%) compared with multicultural men (69.5%).[96]

Employers asking for ‘Australian experience’ is a form of racial discrimination from the perspective of someone who is a new migrant, who is doing the right thing and trying to seek gainful employment. This appears to not align with Australia’s skilled migration policy – on the one hand migrants gain entry into Australia based on education and work experience, but then that is not good enough to get a job once in Australia, because they then don’t have ‘Australian experience’. Often this leads to people taking up jobs below their skill level.
– Survey respondent

Children and young people develop, learn and build a foundation for future wellbeing and success in early childhood settings, schools, TAFEs and universities. Education settings can nurture wellbeing through providing inclusive learning environments that celebrate diversity, build a shared understanding of traditions, beliefs and histories, encourage connection to other cultures and promote respect and appreciation.

All educational institutions have a key role to play in preventing, identifying and responding to incidents of racism, and there are several initiatives and policies in place to help Victorian schools do this. This includes Victoria’s Child Safe Standards, which set requirements for culturally safe learning environments, and intercultural capability in the Victorian Curriculum. Targeted resources like the Centre for Multicultural Youth’s and Victorian Government’s Schools standing up to racism guide also support positive school leadership on anti-racism.

Despite this, we know that racism in education settings remains, and there is more work to be done to make sure schools are culturally safe and free from racism. Experiences of racism in places of education can have a profound, long-term impact on children and young people’s:

First Peoples, multicultural and multifaith communities told us that schools have not effectively addressed racism against students. They reported that teachers and staff can lack the training or resources necessary to address racism. They can treat incidents as bullying or treat the perpetrator and victim as equally to blame. As a result, schools are sometimes an unsafe place for many First Peoples, multicultural and multifaith students and families.[114]

Schools can be a place where young people experience misunderstanding, alienation and racism. They are a critical setting in which young people learn about themselves and the world. This includes first experiences of racism, which can carry long-term impacts in life.
– Written submission from the Ethnic Communities’ Council of Victoria

I was lucky at high school – nobody knew my brother and I were First Nations because [we] ... have fairer skin.
– Online survey respondent

First Peoples participants told us that the mainstream curriculum does not properly include their cultures, histories and experiences. They also said that the history of colonisation, violence and genocide of First Peoples is minimised. We heard calls to add these to the curriculum as well as antiracism lessons for teachers and students.

Racism is also a key barrier to First Peoples’ access, participation and success in tertiary education.[115] High attrition and low levels of aspiration for further study have been connected to fear of cultural isolation or racism in higher education.[116]

Racism and discrimination have no place in our state.

This strategy recognises that all Victorians have a right to live with dignity and freedom, with equal rights and protection from racism and discrimination. These values are an important part of our state, enshrined in the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006.

Racism and discrimination are unacceptable and harmful. Tackling racism and leading the way in anti-racism in Australia will strengthen our society and unite our communities.

Anti-racism means more than just responding to racism once it has happened. It involves actively identifying where racism has contributed to the exclusion and unfair treatment of First Peoples, multicultural and multifaith communities. It is challenging our beliefs and biases and transforming the structures, institutions and practices that allow discrimination and inequality to persist.

Anti-racism is a continuous practice and everyone’s ongoing responsibility.

Racism and discrimination damage our society. Addressing racism builds social cohesion and belonging in Victoria, creating stronger bonds within and across different communities.

It creates a safer and stronger Victoria, where everyone can take part and thrive.

Addressing racism and racist ideologies is vital to protect the Victorian community and uphold the values of our state.

The Legislative and Social Issues Committee’s Inquiry into extremism in Victoria highlighted how far-right extremist groups have incited or committed acts of violence or terrorism against First Peoples, multicultural and multifaith communities.[122]

Combatting racism helps ensure Victorians from First Peoples, multicultural and multifaith communities are safe and supported. It also creates a safer and more cohesive community for everyone.

Although First Peoples, multicultural and multifaith Victorians bear the greatest cost of racism and discrimination, racism also costs Victoria as a whole. We all lose as a community when some of us experience barriers and harm that stop people from fully taking part and thriving. Racism also reduces our broader sense of safety, trust and community cohesion.

Racial discrimination has indirect costs to productivity in employment. The health costs of racial discrimination in Australia are around $37.9 billion each year.[125]

Racism has a tangible impact on Australia’s economy, negatively affecting 2 of our largest industries – tourism and international education.[126]

Racist incidents have tarnished Australia’s and Victoria’s reputations as destinations for tourism, migration and study. They have also affected Victoria’s ability to attract and retain skilled workers.[127]

Without targeted actions to address racism, we risk losing:

Every Victorian must understand that discriminating against people based on race or religion is against the law. All of us are responsible for eliminating racist behaviours. It should not be left to the people who have experienced racism. This must be reflected in all areas of society.

To achieve this, we will focus on:

Challenging and changing behaviour is the most effective way to shift attitudes over time.

Guided by the lived experiences of our community, we will work to ensure race discrimination and vilification are no longer tolerated in Victoria and lead a path to anti-racism.

Education and action needs to come from people of all walks of life. Developing anti-racism strategies and educating others should not be the sole responsibility of people from multicultural backgrounds. We can all better educate the people in our lives to not be racist and how to better support people who are victims of racial abuse.
– Survey respondent

Strengthen Victoria’s anti-vilification laws as part of the response to the Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-Vilification Protections including:

Deliver grassroots community campaigns to tackle antisemitism and Islamophobia.

To effectively challenge racism and drive change, the Victorian Government must look inwards as an institution and an employer. We must consider what structures, policies and processes may perpetuate racism and respond swiftly.

To achieve this, we will focus on:

We will continue to build on our efforts to partner with First Peoples, multicultural and multifaith Victorians to make sure their voices are embedded in the design and delivery of policies and services that affect them.

For First Peoples, this means we will centre self-determination in service design. We will focus on supporting Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations to design and provide services to First Peoples that respond to community needs and goals.

As both a workplace and service provider, we will work to remove structural barriers so racist laws, policies and processes no longer stop people from fully taking part and succeeding.

We will know we are on track for success when:

We will develop a monitoring and evaluation framework for this strategy to effectively:

Organisations play a part in creating barriers that stop people from fully taking part in all facets of life including work, study, health and sport. They also have a critical role in reducing these barriers and supporting full and safe participation, progress and safety.

This strategy recognises that the progress the Victorian community wants to see extends beyond what government does. It needs to occur in people’s everyday lives as family members, workers, consumers, students, patients or players on a sports field.

To achieve this, we will focus on:

This means encouraging organisations, businesses and institutions to adopt anti-racism best practice in policy and governance.

This will create safe, inclusive environments and promote fair outcomes for First Peoples and those from multicultural and multifaith backgrounds.

We directly need policy that ensures people who experience structural exclusions to these industries can have opportunities to meaningfully participate in them. This includes embedding diversity standards in the industries, facilitating meaningful collaboration and consultation and supporting ongoing education and training in anti-racism and cultural safety.
– Written submission from Diversity Arts Australia

Develop an Anti-racism ‘tick’ accreditation scheme to improve the capacity of private and community sector organisations to apply anti-racist best practice in:

Publish comprehensive race discrimination guidelines to educate organisations on their obligations around race discrimination. This will include resources to help them:

We will know we are on track for success when:

This strategy recognises that pathways to reporting racism and discrimination do not always make people feel safe or supported. A lack of information, transparency and community trust in services can mean that racism is under-reported.

Reporting racism can be retraumatising for people if:

All Victorians should feel safe to report experiences of racism and discrimination. And all Victorians should have access to culturally safe services and supports.

To achieve this, we will focus on services to support people subjected to racism and discrimination, making sure community needs are front and centre and respond to changing circumstances.

We can improve community confidence to report racism by:

We will know we have made progress when:

In the short term, we expect the number of complaints to increase as the public becomes more aware of their rights and how to report.

First Peoples, multicultural and multifaith communities are critical to this strategy’s success. We will regularly report back to communities on our progress as actions are put in place.

Open communication with communities will enable us to monitor the impact of our actions and ensure community needs remain at the forefront of our work.

Interpersonal racism is racism between people. It can be direct or indirect, and intentional or unintentional. Examples include:

• verbal abuse, slurs, threats, intimidation or physical attacks on people or property

• excluding people from sports, social activities or events because of their ethnicity

• comments or behaviours, like derogatory jokes, that indicate negative or racist attitudes (sometimes called microaggressions).

Random people yell out racist slurs while I’m driving or taking a walk.
– Online survey respondent

Casual racism … where people share some racist opinion in conversation without even thinking about it, because they don’t realise it’s racist or they assume I agree because I’m white.
– Online survey respondent

Institutional racism refers to organisational policies, practices or procedures that discriminate against First Peoples or people from multicultural or multifaith backgrounds. Institutional racism can make it difficult for people to access services or opportunities, which deepens inequality. An example of this is when a hiring manager disqualifies a candidate based on their name.

Not catering for the needs of people from other religions, like [not] having a prayer room or meditation room in their working places.
– Online survey respondent

Forms of racism and discrimination can often be subtle rather than overt incidents. Often, they show up in institutional discrimination with people of colour and First Nations people under-represented in positions of power.
– Online survey respondent

Structural racism is discrimination that is so deeply embedded in daily life that it is seen as the ‘way things are’. Structural racism exists because systems and society have developed over time based on racist principles and practices.

Structural racism worsens economic and social inequality for First Peoples, multicultural and multifaith communities. This leads to poorer outcomes in health, justice and economic participation. Examples of structural racism include:

disproportionate impacts of past public drunkenness laws to First Peoples and people in the Sudanese and South Sudanese communities[136]

schools mainly teaching white European colonial history and ignoring First Peoples’ histories

First Peoples, multicultural and multifaith voices being under-represented in the media

the media promoting negative stereotypes about racialised communities.

Racism cannot be understood only as interpersonal interactions, or as the behaviour or attitudes of individuals. I experience racism constantly, in all settings, because policies, services and cultural norms in this country are designed to serve the white majority.
– Online survey respondent

Assumptions [are] inbuilt into the curriculum that everyone or the ideal subject is white, English-speaking, Christian or secular background, straight and so on. Teaching of culture and history [comes] from an embedded position of white supremacy.
– Online survey respondent