One stakeholder lamented the amount of in-kind support required to sustain antiracism work, noting that they were reliant on such support and very minimal ad hoc
funding. They went on to say:
‘It would be great to have some, umm, people who were good community leaders in
this area who were very knowledgeable about this space, who are actually funded, you
know, to go out and talk to schools, sporting groups, community groups, council and
just have that work funded. And so, this is, you know, constant engagement and
storytelling and sharing and building the capacity to know what to do and being able
to connect with police and community lawyers and others like the preventive space, but
also then the action of what to do the response as well.’71
Another stakeholder emphasised that greater government funding is needed beyond
existing efforts which cover one off events, project work and engagement but do not
include resources for public advertising campaigns and other initiatives that are needed
to drive real change. They said that a lack of adequate funding for public awareness
campaigns in particular means that these rely on work ‘done on [by] communities,
(public) service announcements and freebies and social media.’72
The need for greater funding was also closely associated with need for greater
involvement in anti-racism efforts by governments at all levels. One participant believed
that the level of investment required needs to be on par with some of the other major
national policy priorities such as child protection and family violence to begin to
adequately address racism in Australia. They felt there was a sense that the Federal
Government puts the onus for addressing racism onto other stakeholders that that they
could just pay to deliver ad-hoc initiatives instead of developing a comprehensive, whole
of government led process:
‘Governments need to say, here are five things we need to do to prevent racism and
deal with racism and we are going to need to fund it. I don't think that's in their
mindset.’73
Better protections from racism
There was strong feedback from local government participants about the need for
better protections to address racism, beyond simply increasing funding.
71
Victorian stakeholder
72
National stakeholder
73
National stakeholder
42