What dozens of empty chairs revealed about Australia's racism inquiry

analysis Empty chairs spoke loudest, months into racism inquiry testimony A family who are alive only because a bomb that landed at their feet didn't explode. An Olympian forced out of the sport that changed her life after being belittled and bullied. A mother questioning whether sending her children to school is doing them more harm than good. An elder who is too scared to gather with community in public after another attempt on their lives. This is just some of the harrowing testimony given at the inquiry into racism, hate and violence directed at First Nations people. Day after day, witnesses relived some of the darkest moments of their lives. Some spoke of violence. Others of fear, humiliation, and grief. Many did so publicly, knowing the personal cost, like former Olympic boxer Marissa Williamson-Pohlman. "Institutions celebrate Blak excellence when it is convenient, but abandon us when it matters most," Williamson-Pohlman told the inquiry. "I wonder where my energy would go … if not so much time was spent with me fighting the very system that was created to 'support' me and make my dreams come true." Her story was one of many detailing personal and systemic harm through racism, but many of those invited to listen, explain, or respond never appeared. The inquiry drew heavy hitters, including a former federal minister, lawyers, professors, land councils, and policy advocates, but in many places the absences were just as notable as those who attended. Dozens of politicians, government officials, and national powerbrokers were asked to attend each hearing. Most didn't show up. Inquiries are not just for fact-finding "It's disappointing. I think the public expectation would be if you are a big organisation, if you are a government service, that you front up to inquiries like this and you are accountable," Senator Jana Stewart told me in between sessions in Melbourne. "I think the least they could do is show up." As the senator put it, attendance matters because parliamentary inquiries are not merely fact-finding exercises. They are one of the few opportunities for people with little institutional power to speak directly to those who hold it. The hearings make for hard listening, with First Nations people speaking plainly about the racism, violence, and abuse they suffer on a daily basis. Now that the hearings have wrapped up, the weight of expectation is palpable, but the reality of repeated disappointments looms large, as Arrernte woman and chief executive of the peak body for Aboriginal and Islander childcare Catherine Liddle put it. "I'm here because the story of racism is one of harm. It's a story of hate, it's a story of unfathomable damage — and it's a story that we can change," Liddle told the inquiry. "Racism is pervasive and it always will be until we front up to reality." Hanging over the inquiry is a thorny question: how can this process make change, when so many change makers didn't turn up? A tale of two inquiries Running in parallel to the national parliamentary inquiry has been the royal commission into antisemitism, stood up in the wake of the Bondi terror attack. Like the royal commission, the First Nations racism inquiry came on the heels of an alleged terror attack. A fragment bomb, filled with ball bearings and screws, was lobbed into a crowd of Indigenous people on January 26th. It is not hard to imagine what would have happened had it exploded as intended, something Noongar and Yamatji woman Renae Isaacs-Guthridge has thought about often. "We should be dead because it landed right in front of us," Isaacs-Guthridge told the hearing in Perth. The trauma of a near death experience, was compounded by what she described as antipathy from leaders, police, and the media. "In the days and weeks that followed, as we found out it was a confirmed terrorist attack on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and our allies … there was a distinct pattern of people who said absolutely nothing," Isaacs-Guthridge said. "I believe because we were an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander crowd, there is an underlying hate against us and so we're not taken as seriously." Those sentiments have been echoed across the country as the inquiry travelled, with little acknowledgement outside the hearings themselves. "We are First Peoples, where is the love and respect for us?" Aunty Muriel Bamblett asked in Melbourne. Comparisons with the reach and scale of the antisemitism royal commission were unavoidable, despite warnings that measuring the pain of one community against another does little to address the root cause of racism. "Why is antisemitism put on a pedestal compared to racial discrimination?" Biboolmirn Yorga woman Corina Abraham asked the inquiry in Perth. "What about what First Nations people of our country go through? Why are we still down below?" Failed referendum raises new problems The silence that surrounds the Indigenous experience of racism and hatred from the broader community was noted by many, including inquiry chair Jana Stewart. "We've certainly heard through lots of the evidence… the experiences of First Nations people aren't elevated or aren't talked about with the same level of importance as other parts of our community," Stewart told me. "You can see that playing out probably in the experience of this inquiry as well." But there are those who see the simultaneous inquiries as a built-in accountability system, like former federal minister Ken Wyatt. "I suspect out of [the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion] will come a number of recommendations to do with changing attitudes and racist behaviour towards the Jewish community of Australia," he told me after he gave evidence in Perth. "If we're prepared to do that, then we need to put just as much effort and energy into addressing racism that is faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in this country. They are the First Peoples of the nation." The existence of two separate inquiries into hatred directed at minority communities has prompted broader questions about the state of social cohesion in Australia, and what has led the nation to this point. Some have pointed to the example set by politicians, with many years of culture wars and populist politics souring national discourse. The referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament was described by many as "lifting the lid" on racism directed at First Nations people, as Apunipima Cape York Health Council Chief Executive Deborah Malthouse told the inquiry in Cairns. "The outcome of the Voice to Parliament appears to have given mainstream Australians permission to be overtly racist," Malthouse said. "Those who would otherwise stay hidden now have the courage to share their racist views openly and widely under the belief that their actions are unlikely to be challenged by wider society." LoadingGreat expectations A Wemba Wemba and Mutthi Mutthi woman, senator Stewart is acutely aware of where the inquiry she is leading may go. "I do not want to see another report gather dust on a shelf," Stewart told me during one of the hearings in Darwin. "I think that it absolutely should be acted on with a sense of urgency that people have asked us to in this process." Many previous inquiries, including a national report on racist violence, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, and the Bringing Them Home report, all laid out plans to make Australia a better, safer, more reconciled place for First Nations people. But after three decades, most of the recommendations put forward have been ignored, or in some cases explicitly acted against. Outcomes are also on the minds of those who gave evidence, like Minang-Goreng Noongar elder Dr Jim Morrison. "This committees recommendations risk becoming another report that acknowledges harm without addressing it," Morrison said. "We urge the committee to ensure its recommendations translate into funded, practical action, direct investment in community-controlled truth-telling and healing infrastructures, not another report that sits alongside the many that have come before it." Last week, in one of the final sessions, Yorta Yorta elder Monica Morgan gave detailed evidence on her landmark case that proved she had been racially vilified — the first Indigenous person to win such a case in Victoria. She then had a question for the committee. "What is going to happen as a result of your inquiry? Will there be change?" Morgan asked. "We hope so, absolutely," Stewart replied. "We hope that recommendations and evidence given to this process and through this committee is honoured with action." The survivors who gave evidence have now gone home, but their stories sit in the parliamentary records, proof that we cannot say we didn't know. The question is whether those empty chairs will remain a symbol of indifference, or whether those who left them vacant will act on the inquiry's final report.