Abstract
The year 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth) (RDA), Australia’s first federal anti-discrimination law. While now regarded as a foundational part of Australia’s human rights framework, the RDA was the product of a protracted and contested legislative process. Its passage required confronting legal uncertainty, and ideological division over race, rights, and the role of international law. This article revisits that journey, focusing on the Whitlam government’s efforts to implement the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and the broader vision of democratic reform it pursued. It examines how the RDA was shaped through compromise and perseverance, by reflecting on the debates that surrounded its passage. The history of the RDA shows principled legal reform is both possible and essential for a more just and inclusive society.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Number of pages | 6 |
| Journal | Alternative law journal |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | E-pub ahead of print (In Press) - 2025 |
Open Access - Access Right Statement
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).Keywords
- human rights
- legislative history
- race issues
- Racial discrimination
- racism
- Whitlam
