Australia's Race Discrimination Commissioner, Dr Tim Soutphommasane, says "we should be doing more to ensure cultural diversity also makes it beyond our lobby and lunchrooms, and into our corridors of power". Credit:Andrew Meares That means there were 380 complaints of racial discrimination. According to page 140 of the report, half the complaints were terminated for a variety of reasons. This leaves a tiny number, about one credible complaint per 125,000 people. An infinitesimal number of race discrimination claims end up being tested in court. This has not stopped the Australian Human Rights Commission from promoting the impression that Australia is a country where Muslims, in particular, are subjected to endemic racial discrimination.

The most recent example is a report published last week, Freedom From Discrimination: Report on the 40th anniversary of the Racial Discrimination Act, by Dr Tim Soutphommasane, the Race Discrimination Commissioner. At page 37, he writes, "Representatives of Muslim and Arab organisations also reported that members of their communities experienced racial and religious vilification with regular frequency … "According to various participants [in consultations], the raising of the official terror alert in August 2014 has made many Australian Muslims feel a sense of 'us versus them'." Dr Soutphommasane returned to the theme on page 60: "Discrimination and vilification directed at Muslim Australians was consistently raised as significant concerns in the consultations." Last Thursday, I emailed a list of questions and comments to the Race Discrimination Commissioner, including the following:

In suggesting that Muslims in Australia are subject to systemic tacit racial discrimination, key cause-and-effect facts are ignored. Of the 20 organisations proscribed by the federal government as terrorist organisations with links to Australia, all 20 are Islamic. The most spectacular race crimes in Australia over the past three years, involving murder, attempted murder, threats to kill and plots to kill – the highest form of racial discrimination – involved Muslims planning or carrying out attacks against non-Muslims. Overseas, Muslims are engaged in violence on a massive scale, mostly on religious and/or ethnic grounds. More Muslims are fighting for Islamic State than are enlisted in the Australian Defence Force. Muslims, have, by far, the lowest ethnic inter-marriage rate in Australia. Arab Muslim women in Australia have the lowest workplace participation, the highest rate of welfare dependency, among the lowest tertiary education participation, among the highest birth-rate, and the highest rate of forced marriages.

These are serious matters, over which the government and the wider community has only marginal influence and control. The root cause of all these elements is the attitudes and conduct of Muslim men. Given this wider context, why does your report default to the divisive and ideological proposition that Muslims in Australia are subjected to systemic prejudice largely based on racial stereotyping? Dr Soutphommasane replied: "The Freedom from Discrimination report documents the views expressed at our public consultations … It also refers to research such as the Scanlon Foundation's Mapping Social Cohesion report which indicates a substantial portion of the population holds negative attitudes towards Muslims … "That there are religious extremists with abhorrent views does not, however, diminish the lived experiences of Muslim Australians who have encountered discrimination and abuse. All members of Australian society, regardless of their racial or religious background, should enjoy an assurance that they will be free from discrimination." No government agency can argue that we are all entitled to an assurance that we will be free from discrimination. No such utopian assurance can be given. Society is awash with discrimination, positive and negative. It is the human condition.

The report by the Racial Discrimination Commissioner could only bring itself to portray Muslims in Australia as victims, in line with the dominant ideological position of the Australian human rights industry. Criticism of Muslims equals discrimination. Related to this, I asked Dr Soutphommasane on Thursday: You state, at page 41, without irony, "That so many participants raised incidents where they felt unwelcome is itself revealing." Would it not be a more realistic revelation that the groups you were consulting were self-selecting and unrepresentative? He replied: "Public consultations held by the commission provided accounts and evidence of the lived experience of racism … Consultations were publicly advertised and open to all people to attend. According to our record, 136 organisations were represented … The report draws, in addition, upon papers presented by experts in law, psychology, political science and philosophy…"

Dr Soutphommasane was a lecturer in philosophy before his appointment to the Race Discrimination Commission. In Freedom From Discrimination, he seeks to rationalise why there are so few formal complaints of racial discrimination. He wrote, misleadingly, that the number of complaints was "relatively low". This fits a pattern at the Australian Human Rights Commission, where, to justify its annual budget, now $37 million, there is a culture of relevance-seeking, grievance-trawling, problem-amplifying, bureaucratic make-work. All while the overwhelming majority of Australians, of every ethnicity and religion or non-religion, put humanity first and treat the people they encounter as individuals, not categories. The number of credible, formal race complaints in Australia is not "relatively low". It is minuscule.

Twitter: @Paul_Sheehan_