Organisers of the nation’s biggest regular poetry slam have taken the unprecedented step of hiring security guards after Mark Latham described it as “Islamic political ranting”.

The Bankstown youth development service director, Tim Carroll, said Latham’s comments on social media were a tangible example of how rhetoric from rightwing commentators and elements of the media had further marginalised ethnic groups in Sydney.

We had to pull all the videos down. [We had people saying] ‘you deserve to die’. Tim Carroll, Bankstown Youth Development Service

Participants in the popular Bankstown Poetry Slam in western Sydney were subjected to a torrent of online abuse following Latham’s comments earlier this year. Latham had labelled the slam an “Islamic political group ranting hatred towards Australia and our institutions, especially the police, soldiers and even the Anzacs”.

Carroll spoke to Guardian Australia about the incident after a roundtable on entrenched disadvantage in Bankstown on Wednesday. The event – attended by Jenny Macklin and Jason Clare, to help inform Labor policy – explored the complex range of issues affecting the Bankstown area.

The slam takes place every month and is designed to promote social harmony through free speech and poetry.

However, Latham’s comments forced organisers to hire security guards as a precaution, something they had never needed in the past.



“He portrayed all of these young people turning up – having the balls and the skills to speak their mind in a really interesting manner – as Islamist hate speech,” Carroll said.



“That kind of stuff is really, really scary. We had to pull all the videos down. [We had people saying] ‘you deserve to die’.”

“For the first time ever we had a security guard at the last poetry slam and had requested some undercover cops, because we actually thought someone might jump up and do something violent or disruptive.”

Community services in Bankstown met to talk about the problems causing entrenched disadvantage in the area. Photograph: Supplied by Jenny Macklin's office

The roundtable heard racial discrimination was making it difficult for young people to be employed, so much so that individuals were anglicising their names on resumes just to get job interviews.

Children were ending up on the streets because the number of youth refuges had fallen dramatically, from 495 across NSW in 2014, to 125. The lack of refuges were forcing at-risk young teenagers to be referred to motels to keep them off the streets.

Vulnerable people in the community were blacklisted by real estate agents, the forum heard, and education standards were slipping, with truancy left unmonitored and no efforts at prevention.

The support service at the roundtable also voiced concern that smaller local organisations were being pushed out of the area by larger charities, which had little local knowledge or connection, but regularly won government tenders.

Macklin, the shadow social services minister, said the roundtables were designed to help inform a social policy that was adapted to the unique circumstances of local pockets of entrenched disadvantage. They will be held in areas of high unemployment, including the northern suburbs of Adelaide, Burnie, Bankstown, and the southern suburbs of Perth.

“Thinking that you can address entrenched disadvantage by a national across-the-board policy just won’t be effective. You’ve really got to do things locally,” Macklin told Guardian Australia.



“And also those places I’ve just mentioned – Burnie, Bankstown, Wide Bay ... are so completely different, different economies, different types of people.”

Labor has consistently spoken of the need to increase Newstart, the unemployment payment, but would not say by how much.

Carroll runs the hugely successful R.E.S.P.E.C.T. program, which teaches young boys and young men about the nature and causes the harms of family violence. It is a preventive measure he hopes could be effective across the country.



The poetry slam is designed to promote social harmony but Carroll said the impact of inflammatory comments from figures such as Latham; the immigration minister, Peter Dutton; and radio station 2GB were profound.

“In terms of the issues that affect this area really, really deeply are hundreds of thousands of Muslims who feel like they’re not part of the society,” Carroll told the roundtable. “And I think that that’s a profound thing, it’s almost become embedded here. People just go ‘what the hell, we’re literally not wanted’.”