Racial Justice Fundraising Dinner

Introduction: Country, Sovereignty, Truth

Good evening, all. Ladies, gentlemen, distinguished guests.

As a proud Kaanju, Birri/Widi Woman from North Queensland who grew up on the lands of the Darumbal People in Rockhampton, I acknowledge and pay my deepest respects to the Gadigal people of the Eora nation – the traditional custodians of the land on which we gather tonight.

I honour their Ancestors and Elders - past and present - for their enduring custodianship of this Country.

Thank you, Uncle Lloyd, for your Welcome to Country.

I acknowledge all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples here, and the cultural knowledge, resistance, and community strength carried through generations of our Peoples fight for justice.

And I recognise the many in this room who have fought to eliminate racism.

It is a deep honour to mark with you the 50th anniversary of the Racial Discrimination Act - a law born from resistance, struggle, and sustained hope. But also, a law born from the raw truths of a nation wrestling with its identity and its past.

First and foremost, must be the acceptance that this land was never ceded. It always was, and always will be, Aboriginal land.  This truth grounds us in humility and responsibility as we gather to reflect and recommit.

I acknowledge Sarah Ibrahim, Executive Director for the Racial Justice Centre, Board Members and the RJC Team, and my brother Tony McAvoy, and sister Nicole Watson, both strong, proud Birri/Widi People.

And I acknowledge all of you who have come along tonight to support – and to dig deep into your pockets - to contribute to the elimination of racial discrimination in our country. And best of luck to those up for awards tonight.

What this anniversary demands

The passing of the Racial Discrimination Act, or the RDA as it is also known, was a powerful moment in Australian history. In fact, it was a turning point for this country.

Coming just after the abolition of the White Australia Policy, it was a pivotal milestone in our journey to a better society.

The RDA: A lever for legal change

In 1975, the RDA became Australia’s first federal law explicitly banning racial discrimination and racial hatred. In 1995 it was extended to make racial vilification unlawful.[1]

It gave domestic effect to Australia’s obligations under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination or CERD for short.[2]

50 years later, when we think about the society we aspire to have for ourselves, for our loved ones and our future generations, I’m sure it is one founded on equality, equity, dignity, and respect. These are the values that the RDA was predicated upon, and values we promote and hold dear as a society.

This law came on the heels of two historic moments:

• the 1967 Referendum - where Australians voted overwhelmingly to include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the census and allowed the Commonwealth to legislate for them;[3] and

• the dismantling of the White Australia Policy, which had underpinned racial exclusion in Australia for decades.[4]

The passage of the RDA was hard-won.

It was introduced four times before it finally passed.

It was amended, watered down, and debated fiercely in Parliament.

And while it was a product of its time - it created a legal foundation for racial justice that endures.

It was not merely symbolic. It became a powerful tool - in courts and communities - to challenge racism, exclusion, and injustice.

As we come together tonight, we not only have an opportunity to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of that Legislation – but we have an opportunity to reflect, assess, and act.

To question whether the RDA has delivered on its promise? Whether it has prevented systemic harm? Whether it has enabled racial justice and protection from discrimination for First Peoples – or for those new Australians who are of a different race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin?

In the absence of a treaty or national truth-telling process that addresses the historical realities of our nation’s evolution, this 50^th Anniversary of the RDA, provides an opportunity to consider and understand how our two worlds co-exist. On one land - recognising and respecting each other’s differences, responsibilities, laws, cultures, values, and needs, without destroying each other.

Racism is not new for our people. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples know racism very well – in fact we know it so intimately, that I believe for many of us dealing with the constancy of racism in our lives – it has become as normalised and predictable as waking up and going to bed each day.

While we know that racism can result in physical, psychological, social and cultural harm, you could say it has become almost instinctual for our People to survive it - given from the moment many of us are born – we are affronted by a world that is designed to question, challenge, prevent or deny our right to be born free and equal in dignity and rights, or to live our lives without distinction or discrimination – because of our race – and because we identify as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples – the First Peoples of this country.

Our people have been living with racism since first contact.

In some ways, through the legacy of resistance and resilience of those who came before us, we have become so adept at living with racism, we may have, to some extent, become desensitised to it.

But the outcome of the 2023 Voice Referendum and events since have bought the stark reality, the insidiousness, and the ongoing prevalence of racism to bare – for our people anyway.

Since the Referendum, we have experienced a significant increase in the experience of direct and indirect racism. Those who hold racist views and attitudes were emboldened by the outcome, and despite being prohibited, they have perpetuated their racial hatred unchallenged, unchecked, and without consequence, particularly online.

While we are necessarily concerned with the shocking recent surge in Anti-Semitism, Anti-Arab racism, Anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia, the public and state sanctioned racism experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples barely rates a mention in public and political discourse. Where it is - it is justified through the Voice Referendum – or denied altogether.

Our fight for survival, dignity and wellbeing, is not reflected from our perspective on the front page of newspapers or on your television screens. But one that is being lived in our homes, on the streets of our communities, through our most vulnerable, and our human rights defenders, and we are utilising any and all tools available to us to challenge racism and discrimination.

In the 12-month period from March 2023 – March 2024, the Call it Out Register reported 453 validated incidents of racism.[5] While this is but a snapshot represented by those willing to come forward and report, this is consistent with the testimonies I received from those in our communities during my recently completed national listening tour – where individual experiences of racism are blatant and widespread, and the impacts of racist policy and practice within service sectors and supports, are felt immensely.

But this is also reflected in the consistent increase in racial discrimination complaints received by the Australian Human Rights Commission, which have risen from 300 in the year 2017 to 462 complaints during 2023 – with the majority of the representative complaints received by the Commission raising systemic issues about the administration of State or Commonwealth laws, practices and/or policies.[6]

Did you know that when Australian governments want to introduce laws that will have a disproportionate impact on racial or ethnic groups, they simply suspend the Racial Discrimination Act?

Did you know that every time the Federal RDA has been suspended since it’s commencement it has been to support laws that would knowingly have a detrimental and discriminatory effect on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People and communities?

These include:

• The Hindmarsh Island Bridge Act 1997 (Cth) which removed rights to protect Aboriginal cultural heritage;[7]

• The Native Title Amendment Act 1998 (Cth) which limited the scope of the RDA and diminished the native title rights of First peoples;[8] and

• The Northern Territory Emergency Response (the ‘Intervention’), which overrode a number of human rights protections for Indigenous peoples living in prescribed communities in the Northern Territory.[9]

State and Territory Governments are also increasingly progressing legislation and regulation that contravenes, wilfully opposes, overrides, and denies human rights, and they do so unapologetically - with the full knowledge of inconsistency with Australia’s international and domestic human rights obligations, and the disproportionate impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.

In my home state of Queensland, we are seeing the “egregious breaches of human rights against children, reminiscent of past Queensland Government removal policies and practices separating children and families…forcibly transferring our children from our responsibility, out of our care, and out of our communities”.[10]

In the Statement of Compatibility accompanying the Making Queensland Safer laws, the Queensland Attorney-General unashamedly acknowledged that the laws would disproportionately impact Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, would be more punitive than necessary, and would likely lead to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of children.[11]

This treatment is not isolated to Queensland either – it is happening in all jurisdictions – and with little to no challenge or recourse from the Federal Government to hold States and Territories accountable to their human rights obligations under the RDA and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

In the absence of this accountability, Aboriginal leaders have lodged a formal complaint with the CERD Committee in the hope of encouraging some level of redress and reform.[12]

As Tony McAvoy and I were reflecting in the last week, while the RDA was instrumental in abolishing the so-called Protection and Assimilation Laws of the past, laws that have a discriminatory impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are very much still alive and intact.

The RDA made MABO possible

For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities, racism is as much individual as it is structural. Both are pervasive and persistent.

While law is often treated as remote, dry, or impersonal, and definitely has its limitations, history shows its potential for transformation.

I recently gave the Mabo Oration, where I reflected on the domestic legislative arrangements that facilitate greater capacity for the co-existence of two laws on the one land – including how the Native Title Act set a foundation for broader application of cultural law and custom recognised by the Western Legal System.

But this would not have been possible without the Racial Discrimination Act.

The RDA played a foundational role in the landmark High Court decision Mabo No. 1.

Mabo challenged Queensland’s Coast Islands Declaratory Act - a law introduced by former Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen - that sought to extinguish native title rights of the Meriam people without their consent or compensation.[13]

The High Court found this law discriminatory under the RDA, because it singled out First Peoples and denied their rights to their lands and territories.[14]

This successful challenge paved the way for Mabo No. 2, which shattered the doctrine of terra nullius - the lie that justified colonial dispossession by asserting that the land was empty and unowned.[15]

Mabo was made possible by the RDA. But the legacy of Mabo wasn’t just about land - it demonstrated that legality and truth could overturn structural racism embedded in Commonwealth law.

But Mabo did not happen in isolation. It was a product of decades of activism, legal strategy, and the unyielding spirit of Meriam people led by Eddie Mabo and his co-complainants. It was the legal framework created by the RDA that enabled this fight to succeed.

The power of law to restore rights and dignity must never be underestimated. But law alone is never the end. It is a step, a foundation, and a tool to achieve justice.

The limits of the RDA

The RDA marked a monumental shift, a legal foothold. But it has its limits.

It has not dismantled the deeper legacies of colonisation - dispossession, child removal, forced assimilation and cultural erasure, incarceration, and deaths in custody.

While it prohibits racism, it does not prevent it.

It reacts to it, but that is only after harm occurs, and there are rarely meaningful consequences or penalties for breach.

These harms continue, reinforced by, and entrenched in policies and systems that often proceed unchallenged. And the burden to challenge racism is on those least resourced to carry it: the people already harmed.

Systemic racism persists: Two recent cases

We only need to look to the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples nationally within punitive systems like out-of-home care, youth detention and adult incarceration to see the obvious and pervasive impacts on the lives of our people.

Despite being only 3.8 percent of the Australian population and national commitments to reduce Indigenous incarceration, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples are approximately 38 percent of the prison population, increasing consistently and in lock step with purported criminal justice reforms across jurisdictions.[16]

In the Northern Territory, where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are 26 percent of the population, they constitute approximately 85 percent of the prison population.[17]

And of the approximately 850 children aged 10 and over in detention on any given night across Australia – more than 500 of them – approximately 60 percent are First Nations Children.[18]

Since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991, which investigated the deaths in custody of 99 Aboriginal people, we have seen almost 600 more deaths, with 12 of these occurring in 2025.[19]

There has been no justice for those who lost their lives or their families, and no one - either individual, agency, or authority - has ever been held criminally responsible for any of these deaths.

In the past two weeks, two more Aboriginal deaths occurred in custody in the Northern Territory’s system:

• Kumanjayi White, a 24-year-old Warlpiri man with disability, died after being restrained by police inside an Alice Springs supermarket. His death sparking nationwide protests and calls for an independent investigation.[20]

• Shortly after, a 68-year-old Wadeye Elder died in Darwin’s Royal Hospital after being taken into custody by police at the Darwin airport and held at the Palmerston watch house.[21]

Increasingly we are losing First Nations women and children in these systems, with two children dying in custody within 12 months in Western Australia.[22]

We have seen the Inquiry into murdered and missing First Nations Women uncover the lack of care or response to the racist violence experienced by thousands of our women and children.

And we saw the racially motivated murder of an innocent young Aboriginal boy, Cassius Turvey, which has finally resulted in a criminal prosecution, delivering at least some justice for the senseless loss of his life, and for his devastated family.[23]

Each loss is a reminder that systemic racism is both violent and insidious. It manifests in policies, in policing, and in the everyday treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in our communities and institutions.

We cannot stand by while people die in these systems. It is time to act.

Our communities are tired of having to prove our pain in systems that too often deny our humanity. We are tired of navigating legal processes that are bureaucratic, inaccessible, expensive, and culturally unsafe.

We are tired of being told that “the law is enough” when our people continue to die in custody, after being over-surveilled, over-policed, having our children taken, our lands encroached, and our voices ignored and denied.

Law must evolve

The RDA was a necessary start. But this anniversary must be an anniversary of accountability. And of resolve. Because Australia’s racial justice journey is far from complete.

Our systems must not wait for harm to occur - they must actively prevent it.

That’s why my colleague Race Discrimination Commissioner Giri Sivaraman has developed a National Anti-Racism Framework that centres the voices of First Peoples. That is why he has called for a positive duty in the RDA so institutions are required to actively eliminate racism, not just respond when it occurs.[24]

Beyond the RDA we need complete transformation in youth justice, policing, social services, education, health, and legal systems.

The current piecemeal approach is no longer acceptable. Not now – not ever.

The National Anti-Racism Framework

The Australian Human Rights Commission’s National Anti-Racism Framework – provides a 63-point plan for systemic change.[25] We need government to adopt this Framework urgently.

Of these recommendations, several are vital to my agenda also:

• A First Nations Anti-Racism Framework Implementation Plan, co-designed with communities and properly resourced. Our lived experience of racism is unique — and solutions must come from us.

• A federal Human Rights Act - so rights aren’t rhetorical or ritualised but are enforceable.

• Full incorporation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into domestic law - beyond performative gestures.

• A national mechanism to monitor the implementation of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody - justice delayed has proven fatal.

• A truly independent body to investigate police misconduct.

• Raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14 - because our children belong with community and culture, not in cages.

These changes are urgent. They are evidence-based. And they are critically overdue.

Law is a tool not liberation

The RDA gave us legal power. Mabo and others have showed us how to use it.

But law alone isn’t liberation.

Liberation for First Nations means sovereignty, truth-telling, Treaty, self-determination, and cultural resurgence.

It means building systems in which we are self-determining - guiding our people toward thriving futures that are underpinned by justice, autonomy, safety, and connection to Country.

It means respect for difference and accepting that not all people come from the same place or want to abandon their cultural or racial identities to assume or be absorbed into another’s.

Respect as action

Our consultations have made it clear: our communities want respect - not empty words, but community-led, culturally safe systems.

They want agency. They want services grounded in First Nations values and leadership.

And they want governments and citizens to comply with the law that prohibits racial discrimination, racial hatred and racial vilification perpetrated against them, both individually, and systemically.

Respect is not performative. Respect must be lawful. It must be funded. It must be built into policy, institutions, budgets, data, governance, and reforms. And there must be consequences for non-compliance.

As Gangulu woman Dr Lilla Watson reminds us:

“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”[26]

Solidarity is mutual liberation - not charity. And eliminating Racial Discrimination is a mutual responsibility – not just the responsibility of those subjected to it.

A call to justice

Tonight, we honour the pioneers who brought the RDA into being. We acknowledge the courage of those who have successfully used it to defend rights, land, culture, and dignity - and the sacrifices they made.

We take a moment to remember those who have been lost to racist policy and practices.

We also confront the limits of what has been achieved.

We stand at a crossroads:

• influence that memorialises the past

• or transformation that builds the future.

Do we patch systems or reimagine them? Do we tolerate continued loss, harm, trauma and injustice? Or do we commit, together, to justice?

We cannot wait another 50 years.

Closing: A visualisation of commitment

Imagine an Australia where:

• Children are protected - not criminalised for surviving systems that have failed them.

• Independent mechanisms hold police and governments accountable.

• Rights are in law - not in speeches.

• Truth-telling creates pathways to Treaty and reframed relationships; and

• First Peoples lead in the systems that serve our communities.

The future demands courage, partnership, and vision.

The RDA was our starting point. Mabo was a breakthrough. But the next steps are ours to walk together.

Justice is not a destination. It is a practice - a vow renewed daily.

So I ask, will we carry this promise forward? Will we act and not just speak?

Let’s not wait another 50 years.

Thank you