Australia’s far-left Indian-born Race Discrimination Commissioner has warned politicians not to link immigration to the housing crisis in the lead-up to the federal election, claiming it is “racist rhetoric” that “dehumanises” migrants.
Giridharan Sivaraman, who was a lawyer and professional multiculturalism advocate before being appointed to the role in 2024 and makes a salary of $398,450 a year plus $40,000 accommodation assistance and $10,000 for reunion travel assistance, spoke out in an interview with The Guardian on Sunday.
He said he was worried that “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,” Mr Sivaraman 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.”
Mr Sivaraman also claimed that political debates in Australia resulted in “the bile of racism just pouring out”.
“During Covid: anti-Asian racism; during the referendum: anti-First Nations racism; more recently: anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian [and] anti-Arab racism. Racism just keeps happening,” he said.
His comments come amid controversy on social media over his own comments 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.
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
“I do not think that anti-White racism, or reverse-racism, is the significant issue of racism that is actually happening,” he said at the time.
“And it completely moves us away from the actual problems of structural and other forms of racism in this country.”
Mr Sivaraman, who was allowed to migrate to Australia as a child, went on to claim that all of the positions of power in Australia are held by White people, and stated that his “big long-term project” was to investigate “structural racism”.
He claimed there were “systems in place” that enable the progress of White Australians at the expense of non-Whites, which he hopes to identify and try to dismantle.
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 describes 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.
Two years later, in an opinion piece for the same publication demanding forced inclusion in the media, he complained that Australians of “Anglo-Celtic background are overrepresented in senior television roles” and asked: “If merit really was the defining criteria why is diversity so low in the media?”
Header image: Left, Mr Sivaraman launching his National Anti-Racism Framework last year. Right, presenting the framework in South Australia (Facebook).
