Fifty years after the Racial Discrimination Bill was first presented to the House of Representatives, it has been bewildering to observe the reaction to ABC journalist Laura Tingle’s unremarkable observation that Australia is ‘a racist country … we always have been’. Driven by the ‘outrage machine’ at News Corp and propelled by other media that should know better, the narrative pushed was that Tingle lacked balance, had presented a ‘one-sided view’, and had breached the ABC’s ‘standards of objectivity’ and ‘impartiality guidelines’—which apparently require the artifice of ‘both sides’, even where none validly exists.

That our colonial settlement was grounded in imperial notions of racial superiority and was violent towards and dispossessive of Indigenous peoples are unassailable facts of our history. The Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (RDA) was a recognition of that uncomfortable past and an attempt to address the ongoing impacts of its racism and race-based discrimination. Yet it continues to be denied and, even when acknowledged, silenced. The pivotal role of the RDA in the success of the Mabo case attests to its landmark place in addressing race-based discrimination. However, the very reason for its enacting—the persistence of racism in this country—still cannot be accepted as unqualified fact.