The recent rallies held in Australia were branded as ‘anti-Indian’ but they actually targeted all migrant communities. These street manifestations are merely the tip of a much deeper iceberg.
Daily, in boardrooms and government offices, migrant qualifications and competence face constant scrutiny in a way that white colleagues never experience. Look around Australia’s corridors of power—corporations, parliaments, courts, newsrooms, law enforcement agencies. Where is the representation reflecting our cities’ diversity, our communities’ contributions?
This exclusion is not accidental. It is systemic. Structural racism isn’t just street violence—it’s the collective bias of educated professionals in hiring, promotion, and workplace cultures. It’s the apologetic smile whilst denying promotion or responsibility, or CVs rejected because of foreign names. For many of us, Australia is a great multicultural nation—as long as migrants know their place. This covert, insidious racism is harder to challenge because it leaves room for doubt whilst systematically limiting life chances.
When attempts are made to discuss these experiences, it is not an equal conversation. The difference in power—and the lack of introspection that privilege affords—makes genuine dialogue nearly impossible. How can there be meaningful exchange when one side holds institutional power, has never had to examine their dominance, and refuses to acknowledge that the problem even exists?
Empty Reports
It has been exhausting watching governments respond with reports, reviews, frameworks, and ineffective task forces. Just in the past year, Australia has seen the Human Rights Commission’s Anti-Racism Framework, Victoria’s Multicultural Review, Melbourne’s inclusion strategies, Victorian Equal Opportunities Commission’s reports, and several more.
Yet none prevented the Sikh community being called terrorists—often by people from their own country of origin, Muslim women having hijabs ripped off, or Asian or African gig workers being targeted for their appearance. These reports gather dust whilst racism flourishes—lbecause the people in power lack the political will for community-led solutions.
There are no consequences for racist statements or actions by people in corridors of power—the most visible examples being attacks on parliamentarians Mehreen Faruqi, Fatima Payman and Lidia Thorpe.
Hope Amidst Hatred
But the days of protests also revealed hope. Counter-rallies emerged in several cities, predominantly organised by Australians of European descent who refused to let racist rhetoric go unchallenged.
These counter-protesters often outnumbered the anti-immigration demonstrators, with people sharing the same racial background as those rallying against migration, passionately confronting neo-Nazi elements head-on—a demonstration that just as migrant communities don’t want to be seen as homogenous, not all white people are racists.
Similarly, migrants also bear responsibility to hold their own communities to account and let go of cultural biases and stereotypes.
Model Minority Trap
The Indian-Australian experience reveals something uncomfortable. This community is often hailed for education, skills and contribution to key sectors like health, technology and other services. This “model minority” label seems like recognition but it is deeply problematic. It divides migrants from other marginalised communities.
Success in this settler-colonial state often comes at other people’s expense—First Nations people, asylum seekers, those fighting for justice here or in their homelands.
Politicians praise migrant “hard work” whilst ignoring Indigenous sovereignty, detaining refugees, silencing Palestinian justice advocates.
The question that must be asked is: are migrants aligning with oppressive systems or standing in solidarity with resistance? Their future depends on challenging the colonial status quo, not upholding it.
There’s a predictable pattern within migrant communities: hedging bets, standing for nothing, settling for tokenism. This is not principled pragmatism—it’s opportunism that serves no community.
Until communities refuse performative gestures—festival appearances, ceremonial scarves, strategic photos with turbans and hijabs—politicians will treat them as vote banks swayed by multicultural window dressing rather than substantive policy. Real influence comes from principled positions, not symbolic recognition.
Gaza Connection
This connects to Australia’s Gaza complicity. For two years of genocide, politicians still call Israel ‘the only Middle Eastern democracy’—a ‘democracy’ systematically flattening areas housing two million people.
When governments and oppositions condemning racism at home refuse sanctioning nations committing atrocities—sanctions they would promptly apply if victims shared their ethnicity—they reveal their moral, racial hierarchy. To them, some lives matter infinitely more.
People chanting racist slogans learn from political leaders: that some suffering is acceptable, some deaths statistical. Australia cannot fight racism at home whilst enabling genocide abroad. These struggles connect through recognising that all human lives have equal worth.
Our Path Forward
Australia must stand with Palestinians through solidarity, not charity—understanding liberation’s interconnection. The fight against structural racism must continue because silence anywhere strengthens oppression everywhere.
Anti-migrant rallies symptomise a deeper disease: accepting racial hierarchy, normalising selective suffering.
Australia must reject this hierarchy. It must reject performative multiculturalism. It must reject reducing communities to manipulated vote banks.
The nation must recommit to genuine solidarity—with First Nations people whose sovereignty was never surrendered, with racialised communities facing street hatred, with Palestinians facing tax-funded genocide.
These are not separate fights—they are one fight for non-negotiable human dignity, non-selective justice, borderless solidarity.
