Racism Inquiry

The parliamentary inquiry is looking at:

• The nature, prevalence and impacts of racism, hate, and violence against First Peoples.
• The role of online platforms and digital spaces in spreading racism and hate.
• Programs and strategies that successfully combat racism.
• The threat of ideologically motivated extremism targeting First Peoples.
• Whether current systems for reporting and responding to racism are effective.
• Other issues relating to racism affecting First Peoples.

Your submission does not need to address every issue. Sharing your experience helps expose the scale of the problem.

There are no right or wrong submissions. Submissions can be your personal story, your observations or insights into the need to address racism in this country.

Submissions can be provided as a written document, video or audio file, artwork, song and/or dance.

Your submission must include:

• Contact information: Your name, address, phone number
• Confidentiality: If you want your submission to be kept confidential make sure you write that at the top of the page. That would mean that only committee members get to see your submission. An alternative is to request for your submission to be published with ‘Name withheld’ which would allow for anonymity but the content of the submission still to be published.

Then go on to talk about:

• Key Issues: Identify the key problems that need to be addressed
• Evidence: To support the key issues, inquiries often prefer “expert opinion” however all evidence from Sovereign Peoples is considered as expert evidence in our office, and the more personal accounts are submitted, the harder for the committee to ignore the weight of evidence.
• Case studies: How have you/your community/organisation been affected by the issue? For this part, you might want to remove any identifiable information.
• Recommendations: Include possible solutions; the committee will want to know how to address the problems.

If your submission is quite long, you may wish to include a summary at the beginning.

The best submissions:

• are relevant and highlight your own perspective
• are concise, generally no longer than four to five pages
• begin with a short introduction about yourself or the organisation you represent
• emphasise the key points so that they are clear
• outline not only what the issues are but how problems can be addressed, as the committee looks to submissions for ideas to make recommendations. Including bespoke recommendations for this purpose can be very effective
• only include documents that directly relate to your key points
• only include information you would be happy to see published on the internet.

Further submission information can be found here and Terms of Reference in relation to the Inquiry can be found here.

If you need assistance in completing your submission you can contact the committee directly on 02 6277 4558.

The deadline for submissions is May 1, 2026.

When you have finished your submission, there are 3 ways to send it to the committee.

We need to keep government accountable for implementing the recommendations that come from your lived experiences.

If you have questions about your submission you can contact them on 02 6277 4558

The inquiry website can be found here.