Australia Talks data shows most of us agree Australia is a racist place

The Australia Talks National Survey asked 60,000 Australians about their lives and what keeps them up at night.

Australians are familiar with racism. Three in four Australians say there is “a lot” of it here.

In fact, the prevalence of racism is one of the more widely agreed-upon propositions bowled up to the 60,000 Australia Talks respondents.

Australians were nearly three times as likely to agree that there is a lot of racism in this country than we were to agree that we “have difficulty making ends meet”.

Even “I pay too much tax” had only 31 per cent support, but most Australians were pretty sure about the racism.

Perhaps it’s the company we keep.

Racist Uncle Dennis isn’t just an invention of stand-up comedians; a solid 61 per cent of respondents confirmed that they have a friend, relative, or workmate who tells racist jokes.

This response was fairly uniform across all Australian electorates and states. 

/ Reponses for “There is still a lot of racism in Australia these days 2021”

Aussies with Non-European ancestry

Of all respondents, only 20 per cent had personally experienced discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity. But when you ask only Aussies of non-European ancestry, the response rate soars; 76 per cent report being discriminated against.

The main form of discrimination was “minor or subtle” (79 per cent) but non-European Australians also reported being subjected to racial slurs (59 per cent), and 28 per cent said they’d been treated unfairly at work.

36 per cent of Australians of European ancestry said they’d been treated unfairly at work, which opens up a range of possibilities ranging from workplaces being annoying across the board to some people having funny ideas about unfairness.

Injustices against First Nations people

When asked particularly about Indigenous Australians, most respondents — 57 per cent — said they believed racial discrimination was the main constraint on prosperity and wellbeing for First Nations people.

Sixty per cent think racism is prevalent in Australian sport, and 51 per cent think it pervades the criminal justice system.

A healthy majority — 68 per cent — feel that Australia needs to “do more to address past and current injustices against Indigenous people”.

In that time, the sentiment among Australians that more needs to be done grew by 5 percentage points to 68 per cent.

Of the Australia Talks respondents, 59 per cent agreed that the Black Lives Matter movement had made “an important contribution” to the conversation about racial injustice.

Views on white supremacy?

/Responses for “White supremacy is ingrained in most aspects of Australian society.”

When tested on stronger statements, like the proposal that “white supremacy is ingrained in most aspects of Australian society”, support dropped back; respondents were split more or less evenly on that proposition (46 per cent agreed, 44 per cent disagreed), with sentiments sharply defined according to voter sentiment. Greens voters (78 per cent) were strongly in agreement, with Labor voters at 61 per cent and Coalition voters unconvinced on 29 per cent.

More than 20 years after the practice of acknowledging traditional custodians was introduced at public events, most Australians now are able to name the traditional owners of the place where they live.

Younger Australians are much more confident, with around 70 per cent of under-30s saying they could name the language or community group identified as their local traditional owners. Women (65 per cent) were more likely to be able to answer this question in the affirmative than men (49 per cent).

/ Younger Australians

Gender discrimination

The most commonly reported forms of discrimination across the Australian population is discrimination on the basis of gender and age; 36 per cent and 35 per cent of respondents respectively said they had encountered poor treatment on those grounds.

Women were more likely than men to have experienced most forms of discrimination from ageism to sexism to racism; the only form of discrimination that men reported more commonly than women was discrimination on the grounds of political views, which was a problem for 17 per cent of men but only 12 per cent of women.

/ Gender discrimination

Disabled have a different story

The proportion of respondents reporting discrimination on the basis of disability was low; only 7 per cent. But what people with a disability said was shocking: 45 per cent had had health concerns dismissed by doctors, 46 per cent had been treated unfairly at work, and a horrifying 32 per cent said they had been physically attacked; much higher than any other group.

In this year’s federal budget season, the government warned that the National Disability Insurance Scheme was on track to cost more than Medicare in the near future.

But Australia Talks respondents agreed in the vast majority — 82 per cent — that the nation should spend “as much as it takes to ensure that people with disabilities have the same opportunities as everyone else”.

/ Disabled have a different story