A Canberra father claims his son was met with laughter after complaining to a Basketball ACT referee of racist abuse on court, attacking him for his Indigenous background.

Key points: Richie Allan alleges repeated on-court racism has been levelled against his son

Richie Allan alleges repeated on-court racism has been levelled against his son Mr Allan says his son "got a laugh" when he complained about the abuse to referees

Mr Allan says his son "got a laugh" when he complained about the abuse to referees Basketball ACT says it is investigating and will 'deal with it appropriately'

Richie Allan said his 22-year-old son Richard had faced on-court racism at several games, and had written a letter to the organisation complaining of racist behaviour months ago, but had not received a response.

Mr Allan senior said Richard had been called a "dirty abo" and a "petrol sniffer" on the court, and that the racist abuse had escalated in recent weeks. He said abuse on Monday night prompted them to go public.

Loading

"The taunting and the racial slurs just keep going on and on and on," Mr Allan told ABC Radio Canberra's Afternoons program.

"He did complain to Basketball ACT about it, and he actually complained to the umpires first, and when he explained what happened to the umpires, all he got was a laugh.

"They're supposed to be the officials of basketball."

However Basketball ACT chief executive Matt Dunstan, who has been in the job for a matter of weeks, said he had not been made aware of the complaint until Mr Allan tweeted about it earlier this week.

"To date, we don't have a report on this incident, we were not aware of it, the only thing we've seen is what's come up on Twitter," he said.

"We have no records of an email coming through or a report coming through, so we'll certainly do more investigating with that and that's certainly something we'll discuss with the family when we get the chance to do it."

Mr Dunstan said if anything had happened it would be "dealt with appropriately".

"I was horrified. We don't have a place for racism in our sport or organisation. To feel that someone felt that way when the came in to our competition, our organisation was really disappointing," he said.

"We'll educate our members, we'll educate our staff, on our stance on reconciliation and racism."

Mr Dunstan said he had reached out to Mr Allan several times to speak about his son's complaint personally, but had not received a response.

Richie Allan said his son was left "heartbroken" by the abuse. ( ABC News: Michael Black )

Mr Allan said the hardest part was seeing Richard's "broken heart" due to the racism he faced while playing a sport he loved.

"It got to him, and it got to the point after about eight weeks … he did contact me and say 'can we take this further'," Mr Allan said.

"You want to have the next generation to rid racism, but unfortunately when you have the next generations coming through with these types of words, we need to do something about it.

"I would have actually got up and stopped the game. This is not on.

"We can't educate people after the game's finished. We need to stop it right there and then. And if that means stopping the game there and then so be it."

Racism at games seen 'far too often'

Pierre Johannessen, whose charity Big Bang Ballers helps girls who have migrated to Australia get a taste of the country's love of sport, said racism at games was something he witnessed far too often.

He said he had seen inappropriate behaviour at both under-12s and under-16s games.

"It wouldn't be uncommon at all to hear comments, not just from kids, but more distressingly parents from opposing teams," he said.

"It's the reality of life. Racism is still unfortunately too big a part of our culture and it's something that these poor girls had to deal with from a very very early stage."

He said comments were often veiled, rather than "outright racism", but concerningly frequent.