We are so good at doing the same thing over and over again - and then failing to learn from the lessons.

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Here we are - about to rush through hastily put together hate speech laws bound to cause unwanted harm. And here we are - about to embark on a royal commission into anti-Semitism. The good news? The fourth of its key aims: making any other recommendations arising out of the inquiry for strengthening social cohesion in Australia and countering the spread of ideologically and religiously motivated extremism in Australia.

The bad news? We've been down the rabbit hole before - trying to find the sources of racist violence. We had a national inquiry in 1991. Yes, we did an awesome job of finding out what our problems were. We did a terrible job of acting on recommendations. To be honest, that's my fear this time around.

What happened in 1991? As with many things in my life, I consulted an elder. Andrew Jakubowicz, long time professor of sociology at the University of Technology, now emeritus, was a consultant to that inquiry some 35 years ago now. What triggered the inquiry? Incidents against Arabs/Muslims, Asian immigrants and Indigenous Australians, where the Commonwealth law was felt to be insufficient. Social attitudes were problematic. Geez, could be right now. Just add in Jews to the list.

Jakubowicz says the key points for him at the time were stereotypical and biased reporting partly because there were no journalists from those negatively stereotyped ethnic backgrounds working in the media. That meant the wider population was seriously under-informed about diverse experience. There was, he says, always representation of "the other" as threat, usually a violent threat. Hello Peter Dutton's shocking misrepresentations of African "gangs". This century, last century, same same. Both politicians and journalists need to do a better job.

As he says, it is critical for diverse experiences to be institutionalised as part of the decision........

© Canberra Times