It is essential to highlight the role of history in shaping where we are today – shaped the institutions of current modern Australia, it’s laws, the dialogue, the media. That history has created different layers and levels of racial inequality. — consultation with subject-matter expert, NARF Project, May 2021 – April 2022 Participants also asserted the need for enhanced understanding of Australia’s migration history, and discriminatory immigration laws and policies. These include the White Australia Policy and associated dictation testing, alien registration cards, the internment camps of World War I and World War II, and the Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901 (Cth). Public awareness about this history was seen as critical to an understanding of the function of race in Australia’s settler-colonial society from 1788 through to the present, and how disparate treatment based on race is embedded across all aspects of public life. Participants perceived the impacts of this history in current border control laws, policies, and practices (including asylum seeker policies and visa and citizenship policies), through to the racialised narratives reproduced in the media and public discourse. Subject-matter experts and organisations representing the interests of migrant, refugee and faith communities that are negatively racialised asserted that including information about racially discriminatory laws, policies, and practices in narratives about who is or was ‘Australian’ would improve understanding about the way non-white and non-English speaking migrants and migrant communities have been and continue to be characterised as ‘other’ or ‘not Australian’. Participants noted the lack of transparency about this history renders some communities invisible, including in relation to their diversity, their needs and priorities, and their contributions to Australian society, as well as the way racism systematically operates to centre whiteness and reproduce exclusion and inequities for them. Australia would like to see multicultural Australia as part of the mainstream but that’s unhelpful because it means that people aren’t seen, and structural racism is not highlighted. — consultation participant representing a multicultural peak body, NARF project, May 2021 – April 2022 National Anti-Racism Framework Scoping Report 2022 | 104