Editor's Blog

A Thai woman under the age of 30 entering Australia is likely to be pulled aside and questioned at length at immigration about the purpose of her visit. Africans in the Flemington and North Melbourne area are 2.5 times more likely to be stopped by police than other groups despite having a lower crime rate.

Young Chinese parents have complained to the Human Rights Commissioner that their online orders for baby formula were cancelled because of their names and that some shops had signs in English which state a limit of 4 tins, but the signs written in Mandarin state the limit is 2. Supermarket giant, Woolworths which is at the centre of the baby formula saga denied any racial discrimination, and put it down to ‘ticketing error’.

Recently, New South Wales Greens Member of Parliament Mehreen Faruqi and her husband were entering the US through Los Angeles Airport. Unlike other passengers on the flight, Faruqi, a Pakistani-born Australian, and her husband were questioned for almost an hour about their previous travel and how they obtained their Australian passports. While US authorities allege that Ms Faruqi was selected for additional processing on the basis of random selection, the facts at hand point to something different, notes a recent report in the Huffingtonpost.

In Australia, the ABF does acknowledge that it uses groupings of behaviours and traveller characteristics to create profiles of high-risk travellers before and at our border, according to John Coyle, Senior analyst, border security, Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

The purpose of these frameworks is to allow the allocation of ABF resources to the targeted management of specific national security and crime risks: not particular passenger groups, explained Mr Coyle in an article for the Huffingtonpost. However, he does not believe racial profiling is a problem in Australia.

“I would argue that racial profiling does not occur in Australia. But, this does not necessarily mean that our targeting frameworks could not at times become discriminatory in nature. This is simply a necessary strategy of risk management in a high-volume threat landscape."John Coyle, Senior analyst, border security, Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

“Public disclosure of targeting and risk management models isn't possible for reasons of national security. But there is possibly room for these profiles to be periodically subjected to external review by entities such as the Australian Human Rights Commission.” Mr Coyle wrote.

It was both external and internal review that forced the Victorian Police to recently change its ‘police manual’ formalising ‘zero tolerance’ on racial profiling.