Crowd-funding raises thousands for new Australia Day ad campaign featuring girls in hijabs

Hundreds of people have given money to fund an advertising campaign featuring two girls in hijabs, after an Australia Day billboard which used their photo was taken down following complaints.

The electronic billboard at Cranbourne, in Melbourne’s south-east, was part of a Victorian Government campaign to promote Australia Day events in the city.

It showed two girls wearing hijabs, a head covering worn by some Muslim women, celebrating Australia Day last year.

Yesterday, Victoria’s Minister for Multicultural Affairs Robin Scott said the company that operated the billboard, QMS, took the ad down based on the safety of their employees and business infrastructure.

“There were a series of complaints, some of which were of an abusive and threatening nature, that were made to the organisation QMS that put the billboard up,” he said.

Executive creative director of Campaign Edge advertising agency, Dee Madigan, is behind the Go Fund Me campaign to feature the girls in another campaign.

The campaign page states the agency is “talking to media buyers now” and “looking at a full-page press ad and a billboard to start”.

Ms Madigan said the idea of a replacement billboard was to show the community that “most Australians are not horrible racists”.

“I’m really angry, this was a photo of two young Australian girls celebrating Australia Day,” she told ABC Radio Melbourne.

“I feel for the Muslim community, they’re damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

“You get all the racists saying ‘oh, they don’t assimilate’ and then there’s literally a photo of them celebrating Australia Day and you get the same people saying ‘that’s not right’ – it’s just not OK,” she said.

The campaign page states the agency is “talking to media buyers now” and “looking at a full-page press ad and a billboard to start”.

“The same groups who complain ‘Muslims don’t assimilate’, complained about the photo OF AUSTRALIAN MUSLIMS CELEBRATING AUSTRALIA DAY,” the post reads.

“And due to this pressure the billboard was removed.

“If you or your business thinks this is not OK, please help us fund a billboard and print campaign featuring these two girls promoting Australia Day.”

The campaign has a stated goal of $50,000.

Two hours after going live, it had already secured more than $14,000 in pledged support. By four hours in, that had jumped to more than $27,000.

“We’ll just let it keep going, because if we get enough we’ll put a billboard up in every city,” Ms Madigan said.

Islamic community in ‘genuine fear’

Earlier today, chairperson of the Victorian Multicultural Commission Helen Kapalos said the racism being experienced by the Islamic community was unprecedented and was eliciting “genuine fear”.

“Racism is cyclical, but this brand of racism is not something that we’ve seen before and not encountered before, and I believe that this will have to be a sustained campaign,” she said.

The United Patriots Front, a far-right group opposed to immigration, published an image of the billboard on its Facebook page on January 13, which was widely shared.

The group posted again yesterday to inform their followers that the billboard had been taken down.

Ms Kapalos said while the decision to pull the billboard down “looked like a partial backdown”, she said those threatened had the right to take it seriously.

“What’s more disturbing is the far-right extreme groups see this as a victory, [but I think it’s] absolutely the opposite,” she said.

What it does is it emboldens sections of the community to speak out against these kinds of comments as well.”

Ms Kapolos said the commission was in the midst of planning a campaign called “I’m an Australian Muslim, get over it” to address “stereotypical claims and mistruths”.

This post originally appeared on ABC News.