The number of people seeking help for racist hate crimes has increased 50 per cent in the last 12 months, the peak body for community legal centres in Victoria said.

“Just in Victoria over the last year where we saw a horrific campaign where politicians used deliberate racial scapegoating to try and win votes, our more than 50 centres in Victoria reported a 50 per cent increase in racist attacks,” Melanie Poole from the Federation of Community Legal Centres told Hack.

Melanie said it’s a pattern that community legal groups are seeing repeated throughout the country.

We have over 200 community legal centres across Australia, and we see the reality of what happens when you allow hate speech to flourish.

Melanie said there’s a direct correlation with media reporting and political conversations around race and migration, and race-based abuse.

“I’ve spoken to a whole bunch of centres and asked if you feel really confident drawing a link between the political rhetoric and what you’re seeing, and they said yes, no-brainer,” she said.

“You’ll see a headline in the Herald Sun and the next day you’ll have people coming through [to your legal centre].”

The Victorian service has racist attacks “in the hundreds”, Melanie said, adding that a lot of victims feel too intimidated or disheartened to continue with prosecutions. She blames a small minority of far-right extremists who have been emboldened by political rhetoric.

‘African gangs’ in the spotlight

Law and order was a big issue during this month’s Victorian state election, with the Coalition drawing heavily on reports that ‘African gangs’ were running rampant through the state.

Earlier this year, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton attracted criticism when he claimed Victorians were afraid to go out to restaurants because they felt intimidated by African criminals.

Just this week, the South Sudanese Australian National Basketball Association said it had struggled to find somewhere to host next month's Summer Slam because of the negative coverage of African Australians.

"Stadium managers are afraid to host our event because of the African gang stories they see in the news," the association wrote in a Facebook post.

Melanie said the victims of racist attacks seen by her organisation aren’t just of African origin, but immigrants from other backgrounds too.

According to this year’s Scanlon report on social cohesion, an overwhelming majority of Australians support multiculturalism and reject immigration restrictions based on where someone is born.

Two-thirds (63 per cent) believe migrants make Australia stronger, but another 37 per cent believe our immigration intake is too high.

‘She was terrorised and intimidated’

The types of behaviour community lawyers are seeing range from verbal abuse to physical attacks.

“A young Somali mum was walking her baby in a pram in Collingwood, in broad daylight, and two white men came up and started laughing and telling her to go back to where she came from,” Melanie said.

“Then they grabbed her pram that had her baby in it and started rattling the pram. She was absolutely terrorised by it. She was totally intimidated.”

Melanie told Hack some of the most severe cases reported to community legal centres included axe and knife attacks.

“We’ve had two young people that I know of who were viciously [attacked]. One was stabbed and one was attacked with an axe. The last time I’d spoken to their lawyers they were still in hospital,” Melanie said.

They’d been in hospital for significant amounts of time and might be left with disabilities for the rest of their life.

The attackers were “far-right activists” who hurled racist abuse at the victims during the attack, Melanie said.

Melanie’s organisation has lawyers in high schools across Victoria, and she said there have been reports of harassment and abuse from young people, too.

“We’re talking about how this political conversation…has made them deeply question their sense of belonging,” she said.

Police urge victims to report racist crime

Commander Stuart Bateson, head of Victoria Police’s Priority Communities Division, told Hack that reports of racist attacks are taken very seriously by the force.

“Every Victorian has the right to feel safe in their community and Victoria Police does not tolerate any acts of violence or hate simply because of someone’s ethnicity, religion or race,” he said.

“Victoria Police encourages anyone who has been victimised on the basis of ethnicity, faith, or culture to come forward and report the matter to Victoria Police.”

This is unacceptable behaviour and we treat these reports very seriously.

Commander Bateson said the African-Australian Community Taskforce advised the force on instances of “racial vilification, lateral violence, and other crimes affecting the African communities of Victoria”.