Warning: This story contains racist and offensive language.
When a former Indigenous employee of NSW Health complained about racist incidents in the workplace, including a colleague painting her face black at a work function and posting the image of it on the department's public Facebook page, she says she was told by a senior manager that she must be "sensitive" because of her Aboriginal heritage.
When a Victorian social worker of Lebanese heritage was asked by her direct manager at work, "Why are the Lebos destroying Coburg and Broadmeadows [in Melbourne]," he was perplexed why she had taken offence and she had to explain to him why his comment was inappropriate.
When a woman of Muslim faith in the public sector was asked by a colleague, "What are your cousins in the Taliban going to do next," she was traumatised but decided to remain silent to avoid further discrimination.
These are just a few confronting examples of workplace racism allegations, spanning more than a decade.
Research by consulting firm MindTribes and the University of Melbourne, based on 42 in-depth interviews and 188 survey responses from people working in the public sector, found that 76 per cent of respondents either witnessed discrimination, experienced discrimination, or had both witnessed and experienced it.
The research, which was carried out over 2021, looked at historical racist incidents, and found that 69 per cent of respondents felt "low or no confidence" in the reporting process and only 1 per cent had "high confidence".
"Consistently across all ethnic groups, more than 50 per cent of respondents felt that the impacts of systemic racism were high or very high for their psychological safety, job motivation and career prospects," the report found.
"And 15 per cent of respondents expressed concern for their physical safety."
The latest data follows a report from Diversity Council Australia (DCA) called Racism at Work, released earlier this year, based on a survey of 1,547 Australian workers across various sectors.
The DCA survey found 88 per cent of respondents agreed racism was an issue in Australian workplaces and 93 per cent agreed organisations needed to take action to address it.
However, while support for organisations to tackle workplace racism was high, only 27 per cent of survey respondents said their organisations were proactively preventing workplace racism.
The research follows the recent death of Aishwarya Venkatachalam, aged 27.
The EY senior auditor fell to her death from the roof of her work office building in Sydney's CBD on August 27.
Ms Venkatachalam, an Indian national, had only moved to Australia 11 months earlier to take up the position and had complained to friends about grappling with bullying and racism.
Her death has triggered a focus on the industry's work culture, and EY has since appointed former sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick to investigate the tragedy.
Survey shows racial profiling is common
MindTribes chief executive Div Pillay said the survey found racial profiling against Muslim women and minorities was common.
She said there seemed to be a "high threshold of tolerance for racism" in Australian workplaces.
"At the height of the Afghanistan crisis, women who are of Muslim faith, even though they didn't wear a hijab, were telling us that they had comments even in the office about, 'What are your cousins in the Taliban going to do next,'" Ms Pillay said.
"Those sorts of comments really made them feel isolated and small in the workplace, and they felt that they were constantly racially profiled."
In addition, she said respondents, many of which were women who recently migrated to Australia, complained of a lack of duty of care for what they were experiencing.
"They felt quite isolated there [at their workplace]," Ms Pillay said.
"There was not an inquiry about whether they were returning to an unsafe work environment, what they needed in terms of support or counselling.
"One woman cited that she was told that if it was really that bad that she should go to the Victoria police and report it there. So, from these women's accounts, it's almost disincentivising them to report."
She said this sent signals to people experiencing racism that it was not worth fighting it.
"That is deflating for women because they know that it's happening," she said.
'Emotional destruction': The long-lasting impacts of racism at work
Jacqueline Stewart breaks down in tears when she recalls the trauma she experienced while working for NSW Health.
Ms Stewart describes her time at NSW Health as "emotional destruction" and says the impacts of racism and bullying are long lasting.
"I've experienced people refusing to work with me," she said.
"I've applied for jobs and, even if I am qualified, I'm finding that I'm struggling to get into employment now.
"It's impacted my family. It's been a massive impact."
Between 2018 and 2020, Ms Stewart worked within the NSW Health Education Centre Against Violence (ECAV) — a unit responsible for helping with the prevention and response to violence, abuse and neglect, including within Indigenous communities.
She resigned in 2021 after, she said, her complaints to NSW Health management about racism and bullying were not properly addressed.
There were several incidents, but some of the main ones she made formal complaints about included that a contracted worker in her team painted her face black at a work function and then posted it on the ECAV's Facebook page at the time.
Ms Stewart said she wanted the image taken down because it might have been distressing to Aboriginal community members.
"I had received a few phone calls from people who had seen that [image] … and they found it very offensive for it to be up on a Health NSW Facebook page," she said.
"I raised that, along with some other images that were also up there."
Ms Stewart said she also felt uncomfortable attending work events that were fuelled by heavy alcohol consumption, and when she raised this issue, along with the black face image, with a human resources manager she was told that she must be sensitive because of her Aboriginal heritage and childhood trauma.
She says apart from complaining internally, she also raised the matter in a letter to NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard.
"I felt like I was in this vicious cycle of nobody actually understanding the intensity of the impacts for me personally as a worker in Health New South Wales. But also [members of] the community were coming to me and saying, 'Hey, aren't you doing anything about this?'"
In another incident, Ms Stewart said a senior manager also made another racist remark, telling her directly that as an Aboriginal person she needed to work harder so that non-Indigenous people do not judge her for "slacking off".
Ms Stewart said that, while she went on WorkCover for about two years, she struggled to return to full-time duties because she felt she was being forced to return to work with "no cultural safety plan" and "no acknowledgement of the racism or the blackface".
And while her complaint was internally investigated, and she was offered a new position and a payout, she said the job offer was later revoked.
She said the department argued she had released "confidential information" but did not explain to her at the time what this information was.
A spokesman for NSW Health said they took allegations of racism and bullying seriously.
"All complaints, or allegations are treated sensitively, seriously and fairly," the statement said.
"The case was fully investigated, appropriate action [was] implemented for those involved and [it] has been resolved.
"We acknowledge the impact this had on all involved and have worked closely with our staff to improve our culture."
'Shocked, disappointed, angered'
Hala Abdelnour says she has endured both overt racial slurs as well as more covert examples of racism in several workplaces.
More than a decade ago when she held a role as a social worker, her direct manager at work asked her, "Why are the Lebos destroying Coburg and Broadmeadows," without understanding how that could be offensive to her.
"The implication [was] that it was a fair dinkum kind of question to ask," she said.
"It was like this is an absolute truth: 'The Lebos are destroying Coburg and Broadmeadows, and you're of Lebanese heritage so you need to explain to me why this is happening.'
"I was quite shocked, disappointed, angered.
"But I managed all of that and stayed calm and thought, 'Well, this is an opportunity to provide an answer and have an open conversation, and hopefully challenge this person's way of thinking.'"
After two hours she said he was able to acknowledge his views were narrow and he was open to considering a different point of view.
Ms Abdelnour, who now works with organisations to address workplace racism and gender equity, said this was among many experiences she has had, but they were not always obvious racial slurs.
She said in a recent job she was questioned about why she wanted to take Good Friday off, with her co-workers assuming she was not Christian.
"There's an assumption that everyone from the Middle East is Muslim," she said.
"I expected to just have a conversation about whether I can apply for leave or not, not get into an argument for two months about whether I was Christian or wasn't."
She said she had experienced other examples of bullying and gaslighting, including being silenced at meetings, not being taken seriously and being overlooked for roles she was qualified for.
She believes that, by not allowing equal opportunity for culturally diverse people across all levels of the organisation, particularly in executive and management roles, "you miss out on a lot of creativity and innovation".
"A homogenous group of people can never do enough training to make other people feel welcome," she said.
"The best way to do inclusion is to have representation across all levels."
'The law is outdated and inadequate'
Sarah Ibrahim, a lawyer with the Racial Justice Centre, has been assisting victims of workplace racism who have been afraid to speak up but are seeking redress.
Ms Ibrahim recently made her own racial discrimination complaint against Legal Aid that is currently with Anti-Discrimination NSW awaiting conciliation.
"I've learned a lot through helping my clients and through my own experience … that the law is inadequate," she said.
"There is still a misunderstanding that discrimination is limited to one-off overt experiences and that very nice colleagues would not discriminate."
But she said racism was rife and it led to women of colour often not feeling safe in their workplace.
She wants the law governing bullying and racism, the racial discrimination act, to be reformed.
The law, which makes it "unlawful to discriminate against a person because of his or her race, colour, descent, national origin or ethnic origin, or immigrant status", was enacted 47 years ago.
"The law itself is outdated, it is ineffective. I could say it's wholly ineffective because there's so many limited cases that actually get up," Ms Ibrahim said.
"So that means that people can come to the law, and its ability to offer you remedy and redress is limited and difficult."
She said, apart from offering a declaration that the racism took place, workplaces could also offer victims compensation, but that rarely happened.
Ms Ibrahim said this was because racism was often covert and, in the same way conversations were being had in publicly listed companies about why there was not enough gender balance in leadership positions, workplaces needed to unpack why it was that women of colour and Indigenous people were rarely chosen as leaders.
Div Pillay echoes that sentiment. She wants to see Australia's Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) start collecting statistics about representation of people from culturally diverse backgrounds.
WGEA's dataset covers about 4 million employees or around 40 per cent of the Australian workforce, providing a detailed insight into the state of gender equality in workplaces.
It requires non-public sector employers with 100 or more staff to report to the agency annually against six gender equality indicators.
But Ms Pillay said the data about cultural diversity just was not there, meaning there was no governance or accountability.
"We're seeing a lot of work in gender equality and on gender targets, but we're not really looking at that intersection of gender, race and culture," she said.
"We don't have anything about proactive prevention of racism, other than some education and training that might go on [in some workplaces].
"And there's no responsibility or obligation to do that anti-racism training at all, or to look keenly at the reporting process, and whether there are gaps in there."
Ms Pillay said this meant the unique issues that migrant women and women of colour faced often got swept under the carpet.
The impact of all this is not just personally damaging for the women and their mental health.
She noted recent research by Deakin University that calculated racial discrimination cost the Australian economy an estimated $44.9 billion, or 3.6 per cent of GDP, each year in the decade from 2001-11.
This included the costs of mental health services and loss of income, as well as underemployment.
"These are talented people from all across the globe who are coming here to contribute to the workforce … [but] because of that discrimination disadvantage, they really not contributing the full benefit of their diversity," she said.
