Racial violence in Australia

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Various examples of violence have been attributed to racial factors during the recorded history of Australia since white settlement, and a level of intertribal rivalry and violence among Indigenous Australians pre-dates the arrival of white settlers from the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1788.

During the period of British colonisation, various incidents of inter-racial tension and competition for land and resources between Europeans and Indigenous peoples involved violence, becoming a factor in the decline of indigenous populations during the 19th century. Incidents of racial violence between settler communities followed the large scale multi-ethnic immigration of the Australian goldrushes of the mid-19th century – notably white miners targeting Chinese miners – which contributed to the development of the White Australia Policy which preferenced British and "white" immigration to Australia for some decades. The policy resulted in a largely white race population by the mid-20th century.

Australia's large scale, post-war, multi-ethnic immigration program has seen Australia develop into one of the most ethnically diverse nations, with relatively little racial violence, and in which incitement to racial violence is a crime. Nevertheless, incidents and examples of violence between the various ethnicities of modern Australia have continued to be attributed to racial motivations up to the present time.