Commission calls for national data reform as racism goes undercounted
Australian Human Rights Commission
Media Release
Wednesday 28 October 2026
Commission calls for national data reform as racism goes undercounted
Australia needs a stronger, nationally coordinated approach to collecting and using data on racism, a new report by the Australian Human Rights Commission has found.
Data for change: A national approach to anti-racism data, finds that data on race and racism in Australia is fragmented or collected inconsistently across society, meaning peoples’ experiences of racism are being severely undercounted or erased. This limits our understanding of the full nature and impacts of racism and how to pro-actively address it.
‘We hear about the devastating impacts of racism from communities every day. But many experiences go unreported or uncounted, and our systems often do not capture the full picture,' Race Discrimination Commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman said.
‘This is not about collecting more data to prove racism exists. We already know it does. It is about making inequality visible, holding institutions to account and giving communities greater agency over their data to drive real change.
'We all have the right to safety, respect and dignity, but for many people, racism denies them these basic rights. We cannot fully dismantle racism if we cannot properly measure it.
‘Stronger data can drive change, prioritise community needs, measure change and hold governments and institutions to account.’
The scoping report makes 16 recommendations to governments, civil society organisations, and business, including:
- developing a National Anti-Racism Data Plan to coordinate data collection, use, and management across Australia
- reviewing national government standards about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander identity and cultural and linguistic diversity data
- embedding Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Indigenous Data Governance across data systems
- better capturing people’s experiences of racism across workplaces, the legal and criminal justice system, education settings, health, and media and the arts, and addressing barriers to reporting
- taking an intersectional approach to understand how racism interacts with other forms of inequality
- strengthening monitoring, evaluation and accountability across policies, initiatives, and programs aimed to eliminate racism.
‘Australia has a long history of collecting data about First Peoples without giving communities control over its design, how its reported on, and how it’s used,' Commissioner Sivaraman said.
‘Communities experiencing racism have consistently told us our systems need to change. Better data must start with the people it is about. First Peoples and other communities that experience racism must have a meaningful say in how their identities are represented and how information about their experiences is used.
'The next step is to work with communities to build a national approach that reflects their interests and aspirations.'
The report builds on previous Commission recommendations for stronger approaches to racism data, including through the National Anti-Racism Framework, evidence to the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion and its submission to the Inquiry into racism, hate and violence directed at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
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