Race discrimination commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman backs ABC’s Laura Tingle

During an appearence before Senate estimates, Giridharan Sivaraman, who took on the role in March, has defended an op-ed he wrote for Nine papers urging the ABC to back its star journalist for ‘calling out racism’.

ABC journalist Laura Tingle.

Australia’s new race discrimination commissioner has defended an op-ed he wrote arguing ABC chiefs should back its journalist Laura Tingle for “calling out racism”.

Giridharan Sivaraman, who took up the role in March, told budget estimates the intention of the article, published in the Sydney Morning Herald on Wednesday, was “to say that we should be able to have discussions about racism”.

Appearing in a panel at the Sydney Writers’ Festival on Saturday, Tingle voiced disapproval of a speech made by Peter Dutton, in which he outlined the Coalition’s plans to cut the permanent migration intake to deal with the housing crisis.

Tingle said that she could not remember a time when a political leader had said “everything that is going wrong in this country is because of migrants”.

She also labelled Australia “a racist country”.

In his op-ed, Mr Sivaraman said that “the person who calls out racism faces far more scrutiny than the racism itself.”

“This is partly why our media is so timid in addressing racism – because powerful voices try to shut down conversations that challenge the status quo,” he wrote.

“So why does our society have an aversion to talking about racism? And what is it about modern Australia’s systems and institutions, its laws and media, its culture and heritage, that enables racism to flourish?”

Race Discrimination Commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Mr Sivaraman in estimates said the intention of the article was “to say that we should be able to have discussions about racism and call out racism.”

“That is something that I’ve seen in the past, where the person that calls out the racism is often suppressed or interrogated more than the actual racism that they’re calling out,” he said.

Asked by Liberal Senator Paul Scarr whether he considered whether the article would be seen as an endorsement of Tingle’s criticism of the Opposition Leader, Mr Sivaraman said he was focussing specifically on her comments that Australia is a “racist country”.

“If you read the entire piece, you see how I’m talking about discussions about racism and then I talk about racism that’s occurred in structural racism that exists,” he said. “So in that sense, I really was trying to focus my piece, and the discussion about it just on that very specific issue.”

Senator Scarr continued to press Mr Sivaraman, asking: “Should your article being interpreted as agreement with Ms Tingle’s views?”

But Mr Sivaraman said he simply wanted to convey that Australians should be able to talk about racism “without being scared of backlash.”

“To be able to have those conversations we need to build racial literacy because if we don’t do that we can’t actually deal with the racism that exists in a structural way,” he said.

Tingle, the ABC’s political correspondent, was counselled by news director Justin Stevens earlier this week, who described her comments as “lacking context, balance and supporting information”.

Mr Dutton hit back at Tingle’s claims on Thursday, saying she had “outed herself now as somebody who is a partisan, she’s a Greens/Labor supporter.”

“I mean, she’s just now completely destroyed her credibility – but they’ll keep her on because that’s what happens at the ABC,” he 2GB’s Ray Hadley show.

“But, as I say, I think it’s comical, and you just let them play their games.”