A former lawyer and leader in the multicultural community has been appointed Australia’s next race discrimination commissioner.
Chin Tan, who is the director of multicultural engagement at Melbourne’s Swinburne University of Technology, will take up the post on Monday.
Tan practised as a lawyer for more than 20 years and has held a range of leadership positions since then, including several years as chair and commissioner of the Victorian Multicultural Commission.
In a statement announcing Tan’s appointment, the attorney general, Christian Porter, said his story was “like that of so many Australians who were born overseas and chose to make a new life in Australia”.
The previous commissioner, Tim Soutphommasane, left the post in August with a blistering spray at politicians and the media, saying it had “never been a more exciting time to be a dog-whistling politician or race-baiting commentator in Australia”.
Soutphommasane, who was regularly criticised by commentators at the Australian, Sky News and other media, said there had been a concerning “mixing of race and politics”, with politicians “enthusiastically seeking debates about immigration, multiculturalism and crime”.
On Friday Tan was questioned on ABC radio about claims by Peter Dutton, the home affairs minister, that people in Melbourne have been scared to go out at night because of “African gang violence”.
Tan said he had no problem going out at night in Melbourne. “I think it’s a question of the public view about his comments, but I think the issues are about crime and issues about support for communities,” he said.
“I’m from Melbourne and I’m quite content, I feel comfortable, going out for dinner at night, I’ve got no issues with that, but certainly we need to look at the issues in terms of supporting communities and helping them deal with the issues.
“My point is always: deal with the crime, support the community,” he said.
Asked if Dutton’s comments stoked hatred or ill-feeling towards African-Australians, Tan said: “It always has a potential, when we’re not careful about the sensitivity in managing a multicultural society and showing that we’re respectful and that we deal with the issues, and labelling and name-calling does not support any of that, it creates resentment, it creates fear, and it kind of victimises communities and does present a difficulty for them in terms of their sense of confidence as Australians.”
Tan agreed that some Chinese Australians felt stigmatised in the debate about Beijing’s influence in Australian politics. “There are obviously some Australians of Chinese heritage who might feel that, in some ways, it may affect their sense of confidence,” he said.
Tan said he felt the issues surrounding section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, which makes it an offence to insult, offend, or humiliate someone on the basis of race, had largely been dealt with.
“The raft of amendments that have gone through with the Human Rights Commission Act, in terms of dealing with [a] complaints mechanism, I think they’ve got to a point now where it deals with those issues very adequately and, I suspect, from my understanding, that government has no plans to change section 18C.”
He said if the public was still concerned about the act, and wanted to have another debate about it, he was happy to take part, but did not answer directly when pressed to say if he believed it should stay as it is.
He said laws would change from time to time “to reflect community expectations”.
