Australian, Until Someone Decides You’re Not

There is something cruel about seeing a photograph of a missing person and deciding that your contribution to the conversation should be to question whether they are Australian.

Right now, families across Australia are waiting for news of loved ones caught up in the catastrophic floods along the Nepal–Tibet border. More than 40 Australians have been reported missing at different points since the disaster. Many were travelling as pilgrims to Mount Kailash. People who left homes, families, workplaces and communities here in Australia expecting to return.

Their families are sitting in one of the most agonising spaces imaginable: not knowing where their loved one is and questioning if they are still alive. And somehow, underneath news reports about those missing Australians, people have decided this is an appropriate moment to ask variations of: Are they actually Australian?

The reason? Their skin is brown. Their name doesn't sound Anglo and most were travelling on a Hindu pilgrimage.

This isn't something I'm imagining or exaggerating. Racist commentary targeting the missing Australians became so prevalent that media outlets were forced to moderate and restrict comments, with people openly questioning the nationality of non-white Australians featured in reporting about the disaster. Australia's Race Discrimination Commissioner has also condemned the rhetoric. Think about the level of cruelty required for that. The conversation had in a meeting at various media outlets to turn off the comments.

All the while a family is wondering whether their father or husband is alive. Someone is waiting for their sister to call.

People are refreshing their phones, calling authorities, contacting tour operators and holding onto whatever hope they can find. Meanwhile, in Australia, somebody looks at their photograph and thinks: But are they really Australian? That should disturb all of us.

Because underneath those comments sits a much bigger question that Australia has never completely confronted: Who gets to be Australian enough?

For some people, "Australian" still seems to have an unofficial visual test. White skin, the Anlgo surname, an accent they recognise and parents who were born here. Anything outside that image apparently requires an explanation. But what people fail to realise is that Australian is not a skin colour, it has no ethnicity nor surnames that define it.

And Australian does not become less Australian because someone also happens to be Indian, Sri Lankan, Tamil, Nepalese, Chinese, Lebanese, Vietnamese, Greek, Italian or any of the countless cultures that make up this country.

I said this recently in a social media reel because I was genuinely frustrated reading comment after comment questioning whether these people were "really Australian" simply because they were brown. And I kept thinking: what exactly would satisfy these people? Being born here? Migrating and becoming a citizen? Having an accent that was like theirs?

I know this conversation intimately. There are Australians like me who have spent our lives being asked where we're "really" from. We can tell someone we were born here and still receive the inevitable follow-up question. "No, but where are your parents from?"

It seems harmless to some people. Sometimes it genuinely is curiosity.

But there is also an underlying message many Australians of colour learn very early:

There is Australian. And then there is Australian, but...

Australian, but South Asian.

Australian, but Asian.

Australian, but your parents migrated here.

Australian, but your name isn't familiar.

Australian, but you don't look like what someone has decided an Australian should look like.

And every time something like this happens, we are reminded how conditional belonging can still feel. What makes the comments surrounding the Nepal disaster particularly ugly is their timing. This is not an abstract debate about immigration policy or national identity.

These are human beings who are missing.

Australian officials have been working with authorities in Nepal and China while additional consular personnel were deployed to Kathmandu, and Australia announced humanitarian assistance for communities affected by the disaster.

Their Australian identity is not ambiguous to the government trying to locate them. It is apparently only ambiguous to people across the comment sections of social media. And perhaps that tells us something.

Because the people making these comments aren't really conducting a citizenship test.

They are policing an idea of Australia. An idea where whiteness is treated as the default and everybody else is expected to explain how they got here.

Somewhere along the way, "Australian" became confused with white, Anglo and English-speaking. But that definition has never reflected the whole country.

And acknowledging Australia's multicultural reality does not require us to erase the people who were here first. In fact, any conversation about who belongs on this continent should begin with honesty about its history. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have belonged to and cared for this land for tens of thousands of years.

Respecting First Nations people and recognising multicultural Australians are not competing ideas. They require us to think more carefully about belonging, history and who gets to feel at home here.

For descendants of migrants and settlers to stand on this land and tell another Australian that they somehow don't qualify because their skin is darker or their surname sounds foreign is an extraordinary kind of entitlement.

And that is why I don't think we should dismiss these comments as a few trolls on the internet. When the same message appears repeatedly "you're not really one of us"  people, children and migrants hear it. Australians who have lived here their entire lives hear it. Second generation Australians like me hear it. And right now, families already experiencing unimaginable pain can see it too.

Imagine searching for your parent's name online hoping desperately for an update and instead finding strangers debating whether they deserve to be called Australian. That is what people need to understand. There is a human being on the receiving end of it. There is a child absorbing that hate. There is a community being reminded, yet again, that some people believe their belonging here is conditional.

At a moment like this, Australians should not have to defend their Australianness while also fearing for the lives of people they love. They should simply be allowed to grieve, hope and wait. And the rest of us should be surrounding them with compassion, not questioning who they are and where they really came from.

My thoughts remain with every family waiting for news from Nepal and Tibet, and with the communities holding vigils, praying and supporting one another through this devastating uncertainty. I hope their loved ones come home.

But whatever happens in the days ahead, there is another conversation Australia needs to continue long after the headlines move on. Who taught us what an Australian is supposed to look like? And perhaps more importantly: Why are we still allowing that definition to decide who deserves our empathy?

Australian is not a skin colour. It never was.