Introduction Over the course of the last few years, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, and ongoing calls for action in relation to Indigenous deaths in custody, the Christchurch terrorist attacks, and spikes in antisemitism and racist extremism, have exposed the ongoing prevalence and harm caused by racism. There is an urgent need for a coherent national policy to address racism. Existing data It’s almost impossible to have a conversation about racism and hate in society because most Australians have an image of Australia as not being a racist country and Australians as not racist. — community consultation participant, NARF project, May 2021 – April 2022 Despite the heightened racial discrimination and inequity experienced over the last few years, there is a widely held view that racism does not exist in Australia or that it is not an issue the nation needs to be seriously concerned about. However, the limited data that does exist about the prevalence, nature, and severity of racism, and the experiences of those who are negatively racialised, challenges this notion. The most recent available data demonstrates that racism needs to be addressed in all areas of public life. In 2021, Reconciliation Australia’s Barometer found that 52% of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander People reported experiencing at least one form of racial prejudice within the past six months.1 The Scanlon Foundation’s 2021 Mapping Social Cohesion research survey also revealed that 16% of Australians had experienced racism on the basis of their skin colour, ethnic origin or religious belief within the past 12 months. 2 These figures increased to 34% for those from nonEnglish speaking backgrounds.3 The Australian National University’s Research Note: Asian-Australian experiences of discrimination, found that in 2019, 65.1% of Asian Australians who participated in the research had experienced discrimination within the workplace or in education.4 In addition, the 2019 Islamophobia Report identified that threats towards Australian Muslims spiked following the attacks perpetrated against worshippers in mosques in Christchurch with reporting of offline cases of Islamophobia increasing by four times and online cases by 18 times within the two weeks after the attacks.5 Between 2020 and 2021, there was a 35% increase in antisemitic incident reports lodged nationwide with the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.6 This data confirms the alarming prevalence of racism in Australia and shows it remains a serious concern. The urgency of a response to protect communities against the harm of racism is clear. National Anti-Racism Framework Scoping Report 2022 | 20