What is racial discrimination under the Racial Discrimination Act?
Racial discrimination occurs when someone is treated less favourably than someone else in a similar situation because of their race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin. For example, if a hotel said it would not serve Aboriginal customers. Racial discrimination can also happen indirectly when a policy or rule appears to treat everyone in the same way but actually has an unfair effect on more people of a particular race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin than others. For example, that where a police service says that you have to be a certain height to join. This requirement may impact on some ethnic groups more than others.
