Australia’s controversial Race Discrimination Commissioner has confirmed that he believes White people cannot experience racism.
Giridharan Sivaraman, a far-left Indian immigrant who was appointed to his role at the Australian Human Rights Commission in March 2024 and collects a taxpayer-funded salary of $408,020, appeared in front of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee on Tuesday.
Mr Sivaraman was asked by Liberal senator Claire Chandler about his National Anti-Racism Framework – that he wants the federal government to commit to – and an accompanying Common Myths & Misconceptions About Racism guide produced by him and his organisation.
Ms Chandler first asked him whether a claim in the explainer stating that “we all live and participate in racist system” meant that he thought Australia was a racist country.
“I think that racism significantly affects systems and institutions in Australia, and that’s something that we need to combat to make our society better for everyone,” Mr Sivaraman replied.
“That same explainer for the National Anti-Racism Framework explicitly says it is a myth that White people can experience racism, do you agree with that statement?” Ms Chandler then asked.
“I think that it’s important to look at that explainer as a whole, not just taking one sentence out, but the important thing to note is that racism is rarely about any biological construct or the colour – it can be about the colour of someone’s skin – but it is about the way in which power might be wielded by one person over another,” he said.
“Ta-Nehisi Coates the African-American writer said that race is the child, racism is the father, it’s often created as a means of oppression, and in this country, in Australia, it has tended to be towards people that are not White, that’s the important thing to recognise.”
“So you do think Australia is a racist country,” Ms Chandler responded, and Mr Sivaraman said: “I didn’t say that, I said that racism exists in Australia.”
The explainer produced by Mr Sivaraman states in its explainer: “Whilst white people can experience multiple forms of discrimination or prejudice based on gender, sexual orientation, ability, age, or class; they cannot experience racism.
“Racism is more than just prejudice, and is accompanied by power to discriminate against, oppress or limit the rights of others. Sometimes terms like “reverse racism” or “anti-white racism” are used to describe situations where White people feel they have been discriminated against because of their whiteness.
“This is a common and particularly harmful misconception, often resulting from a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between racism and other forms of discrimination, as well as the relationship between racialisation and power.”
Ms Chandler also asked the Commissioner about statements he made in an interview earlier this year calling Australia Day racist and saying it shouldn’t be celebrated.
“Australia Day is ‘invasion day’ for our first nations brothers and sisters and is a day of mourning in many ways, and is not a day to be celebrated, and not to acknowledge that just compounds racism,” Mr Sivaraman was quoted as saying, but he told Ms Chandler he meant Australia Day was a day not to be celebrated “for some first peoples”.
Mehreen Faruqi in a question to the race discrimination commissioner last night says the March for Australia is “the far right being emboldened”. The marches seem to really bother her. pic.twitter.com/WWPQQ9s5E1
— Francynancy (@FranMooMoo) October 7, 2025
During the same Senate Estimates hearing Mr Sivaraman was asked about the March for Australia rallies by far-left Pakistan-born Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi, who was wearing a Palestinian scarf.
“The marches were attended and addressed by neo-Nazis and far-right extremists, the Prime Minister responded by saying that good people had attended rallies,” she said.
“We know that politicians over the years have dog-whistled as well, with Senator Jacinta Price making a number of comments about Indian migrants recently, Andrew Hastie said that Australians were starting to feel like strangers in their own country, we’ve seen migrants and international students being blamed for the housing crisis, how does this messaging around people of colour and first nations people help embolden the far right, and does it?”
“Clearly migration is a policy issue that can and should be debated,” Mr Sivaraman responded.
“The issue is when certain groups are dehumanised, or isolated, as, for example, prior to that particular march you just referred to there were posters and propaganda materials that targeted the Indian community which caused enormous distress to many in the Indian community.
“It’s that dehumanisation and isolation that highly problematic and it’s racist in its nature, and that’s what causes the problems, simplistic solutions that dehumanise groups, rather than informed, well thought-out discussions about complicated issues.”
In an interview last year Mr Sivaraman declared that antiwhite racism was not a major problem in Australia, and that the real issue was too many White people in positions of power.
He also begins his speeches with the far-left ahistorical anti-Australian slogan “always was, always will be” and rails against “White privilege”.
Header image: Giridharan Sivaraman at Senate Estimates on Tuesday (Parliament).
The post Australia’s Indian-born Race Discrimination Commissioner says White people can’t experience racism first appeared on The Noticer.
The Noticer
