Australia’s controversial Race Discrimination Commissioner is under fire for calling Australia Day racist and saying it shouldn’t be celebrated.
Giridharan Sivaraman, a far-left Indian immigrant, made the comments in a radio interview from October last year which has resurfaced in the wake of statements he made earlier this month warning politicians that linking migration to the housing crisis was racist.
Mr Sivaraman collects a taxpayer-funded salary of $398,450 a year plus $50,000 in accommodation and travel assistance, and was a lawyer and professional multiculturalism advocate before being appointed to the role by Attorney General Mark Dreyfus in March, 2024.
“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,” he said in the interview, unearthed by The Daily Telegraph.
“All of our system and institutions are inherently affected by racism … these are systems and institutions that are often created during colonial times, and then they’re baked in during the White Australia Policy, and now they are supposed to let in someone like me.
“But structurally do they do that? No, often they do not.
“Sometimes I wonder, someone who looks like me, I think if I want to get on TV, if someone like me wants to get on TV you either bang down the door of SBS, try your luck at ABC, or become a really, really good cook.”
I think Australia’s “Racial Discrimination Commissioner” deeply resents Australia’s English-based culture because he feels loss & discomfort from having to “fit in” with it.
Moving to a country where a different culture prevails seems to be a real burden for many migrants. pic.twitter.com/10rZ5TSEFr
— Very Insignificant Person (@VeryInsig) March 27, 2025
Mr Dreyfus, the architect of Australia’s most recent “hate speech” legislation, described Mr Sivaraman as a “great asset” during his appointment.
He told The Daily Telegraph: “As the Prime Minister has said on many, many occasions, the government has no plans to change the date of Australia Day. The Australian Human Rights Commission is an independent statutory authority.”
But NSW Premier Chris Minns, who also brought in new “hate speech” laws this year, called Mr Sivaraman’s comments “absolutely crazy”.
“Just bonkers … the thing about Australia Day and national days is that they are incredibly important for countries. You have to think about what unites everybody – different backgrounds, different races, different religions,” he told 2GB radio on Friday.
“If you live in a country you need national days to actually pull the community together. If you start jettisoning things like Anzac Day or Australia Day or start to diminish them … what’s going to actually pull people together?”
Last last month Mr Sivaraman said in an interview that he was worried “racist rhetoric” about economic inequality during the election campaign would negatively affect foreigners, and downplayed the negative economic effects of Australia’s record levels of mass immigration.
“Economic inequality shouldn’t be exploited by rhetoric that blames migration for what are usually far more complex and deeply entrenched problems,” he said.
“We need to be really careful in our debates that we don’t dehumanise migrants in making arguments about economic inequality. What we should be doing is talking about how economic inequality exacerbates racism – rather than using economic inequality, exploiting it through racist rhetoric.
“If someone … uses racist rhetoric or dehumanises migrants to exploit an economic insecurity, that will lead to migrants and people of colour not being treated with equality, dignity and respect … That’s what history shows us.”
Those talking points were then used to attack Opposition leader Peter Dutton in his debate with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese this week.
His comments came amid controversy on social media over other remarks he made during speeches and in an interview last year where he 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.
Mr Sivaraman has been an outspoken advocate for left-wing causes on social media, and before his March 2024 appointment shared posts on X in support of diversity in kids’ books, pay parity in women’s sport, and diversity targets at the ABC.
He described himself as “anti-racist, advocating for migrants, refugees, unions” in his X bio, appears to support a treaty in Queensland, and declared he was voting Yes to the Voice, which was rejected by most Australians.
He also begins his speeches with the far-left ahistorical anti-Australian slogan “always was, always will be” and rails against “White privilege”.
In 2021 he wrote a column for Brisbane’s Courier Mail newspaper calling for new laws against online trolling, and arguing that the Racial Discrimination Act should be updated to apply to online private messages and not just public acts.
Header image: Left, Mr Dreyfus and Mr Sivaraman. Right, Mr Sivaraman launching his National Anti-Racism Framework last year (X, Facebook).
