In a trendy café in the heart of Wollongong a pharmacist tells me how he despairs at the hurt in his 7-year-old daughter’s eyes as she sees news reports and hears stories in the playground telling her she should be ashamed of who she is.

In the same café I hear from an imam at a local mosque about the dumping of a pig’s heads outside his place of worship.

In Melbourne’s Coburg I hear how an engineer who also happens to be a young Muslim woman wearing a hijab, is told by a male colleague “over the water cooler” how much he hates Arabs and that they would all be dead within a few years.

A young Muslim lawyer tells me that members of his family fear putting their name to the census because they don’t want the government to know where they live. He says they don’t want to put down roots because they fear that one day the authorities will come for them.

My conversations with multicultural communities in recent months, particularly with Muslim Australians, suggest these incidents are all too common. Australians are being subjected to acts of bigotry that defy who we are as a nation.

With more and more men, women and children experiencing racism in their streets, on public transport and over social media, it’s never been more important to ensure that people can rely on basic legal protections from its crushing effects.

Yet Malcolm Turnbull has signalled he’s prepared to water down protections in the Racial Discrimination Act, to make it even easier for people to express racist and bigoted opinions.

The prime minister’s cynical politics are clear. The people who voted for Pauline Hanson and her colleagues in the Senate abandoned the Liberal party, and Mr Turnbull wants them back. And as his popularity plummets, he also needs to appease the extreme right-wing of his own party if he wants to avoid the fate of his predecessor.

When Mr Turnbull became prime minister, there was hope and anticipation that Tony Abbott’s cruel and divisive politics had come to a welcome end. Unfortunately, we’ve seen more of the same.

Abbott’s man, Peter Dutton is still in charge of immigration. The man who believes that refugees are illiterate, innumerate and languishing on unemployment queues while also taking Australian jobs (go figure) is now trying to ban them from ever setting foot in Australia.

And now, he has breathed new life into Abbott’s divisive proposal that would give people more freedom to spread hatred and division.

Malcolm Turnbull is a smart man. He must understand that section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act just sets the minimum standard of engagement in a respectful, multicultural society and all that is required is that any public debate on matters of race and culture be conducted “in good faith”.

And he must also know that the 18C debate is a proxy. When certain far-right politicians say they want to repeal 18C, what they’re really saying is that they want to repeal multiculturalism itself.

Just last year we celebrated forty years of the visionary Racial Discrimination Act, the final death-knell of the White Australia policy and a signal moment in our journey towards becoming the world’s most successful multicultural society.

Multiculturalism – the celebration of cultural differences within our diverse Australian nation – is one of Australia’s great strengths, a source of our prosperity and happiness. Multiculturalism is a source not only of cultural capital, but financial capital as well. When we attack it we become poorer in every respect.

The election last week of Donald Trump in the United States was greeted by far right groups with the popping of champagne corks both literal and figurative. There is no doubt that, as in the US, Trump’s election will embolden racists in Australia to ramp up their campaigns of hatred against those within the community least capable of defending themselves against it. There is a dark cloud gathering in Liberal Democracies, and we cannot turn a blind eye to it.

By reviving the toxic debate about section 18C, Malcolm Turnbull has given in, yet again, to those who seem determined to consign the notion of the “fair go” to the dustbin of Australian history. What we politicians say in our nation’s parliament has a direct impact on communities – right down to how children are treated in playgrounds and on their way to and from school. Opening up 18C just gives cover for some people to be racist.

Back in Coburg, I tell members of the Muslim community that when my family migrated from Italy and settled nearby, they experienced some racist and hurtful language. I tell them that the refugees who followed from South East Asia had a similar experience, that it will pass and the time will come when a pharmacist’s daughter will be proud of who she is.

“We are pleased you understand” they say.

“But let us be the last.”