Racism Today - Making multicultural Australia
... because of their economic interest in these areas.
Throughout the 1990s there was a sustained campaign to have the
government either legislate to abolish native title, or have the benchmark for
claims made so onerous none would succeed. The 1993 Native Title legislation
did set severely limited rule ...
Racism in Australia
Racism in Australia traces both historical and contemporary racist community attitudes and incidents in Australia. Australia today is a multiethnic society and the product of multiple waves of immigration. All of Australia's population can be traced back to other countries, dating back centuries. Indigenous Australians are believed to have migrated from Africa, and were some of the first to do so.Laws forbid racial and other forms of discrimination and protect freedom of religion. Demographic analysis indicates a high level of inter-ethnic marriage: according to the Australian Census, a majority of Indigenous Australians partnered with non-indigenous Australians, and a majority of third-generation Australians of non-English-speaking background had partnered with persons of different ethnic origin (the majority partnered with persons of Australian or Anglo-Celtic background, which constitutes the majority ethnic grouping in Australia). In 2009, about 25.6 per cent of the estimated resident population of Australia comprised those born overseas.Indigenous peoples of Australia, who had lived in Australia for at least 40,000 years before the arrival of British settlers in 1788, were dispossessed from their land in 1788 by Britain, which claimed Eastern Australia as its own on the basis of the now discredited doctrine of terra nullius. Initially, indigenous Australians were in most states deprived of the rights of full citizenship of the new nation on grounds of their race and restrictive immigration laws were introduced to preference ""white"" European immigrants to Australia. Discriminatory laws against indigenous people and multiethnic immigration were dismantled in the early decades of the Post War period. A 1967 Referendum regarding Aboriginal rights was carried with over 90% approval by the electorate. Legal reforms have re-established Aboriginal Land Rights under Australian law and in the early 21st century, indigenous Australians account for around 2.5% of the population, owning outright around 20% of all land. Intense focus on the impact of historical policies like the removal of mixed ethnicity Aboriginal children from their Aboriginal parent resulted in a bipartisan Parliamentary apology to Aborigines carried in 2008. Aboriginal health indicators remain lower than other ethnic groups within Australia and again are the subject of political debate.Policies of multiculturalism were pursued in the post-war period and first Eastern and Southern European, then Asian and African immigration increased significantly. Legislation including the Racial Discrimination Act 1975, the Commonwealth Racial Hatred Act (1995) and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Act (1986) outlaw racial discrimination in the public sphere in Australia. In recent decades, anti-immigration political parties like the One Nation Party have received extensive media coverage, but only marginal electoral support and successive governments have maintained large, multiethnic programs of immigration. As in other Western nations, tensions in the aftermath of events like the September 11 attacks and Bali Bombing by radical Islamists contributed to strained ethnic relations in some Australian communities.