"Black models won't get work" - that's the title of a recent article published in Cleo Magazine's November edition, that identifies the Australian modelling industry's unwillingness to employ ethnic and Indigenous models.
Kira-Lea Barsukoff, the director of Aboriginal Model management Australia, said Australia was "behind" when it came to fashion and needed a wake-up call.
"[The industry] has been so committed to a certain type for so long that they struggle to break that mould," she said.
"It's a scary area for people because, people are afraid to touch on it, because they don't know how it's going to be perceived."
She said Indigenous Australian model typically found more work in Europe than in Australia, adding: "That's really disappointing, it really is."
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Given the country's rich Multi-cultural population, the article states, of the 1,100 models contracted to Australia's top modelling agencies, there is just 11 who are Chinese, four that are Indian and only seven who are Aboriginal.
Cleo editor Sharri Markson said the bias against these models was flagrant.
"The most outrageous thing about the whole story was the fact that the modelling agents actually admitted the racism and when we went to them for comment and when we presented them with these figures and said to them 'why is it that only a handful of models come from an ethnic background?' they actually admitted the racism, they said 'if you're black, Indigenous, Asian, ethnic, your unlikely to find work in Australia'."
"And when they are offered a beautiful black model or an Asian model from overseas many times they have to tell that model what they say is the brutal truth that they are just not going to get work here - that's how open the racism here in Australia."
Watch: the full report above.
