Britain's recent riots have given much food for thought on the racial tensions present in Australia.

Opposition to asylum seekers is often construed as evidence of an Australian fear of being swamped by Asian or Muslim hordes, but unchecked immigration touches on the sense of fairness for all Australians. Some of the most vociferous opponents of asylum seekers have been other migrants.

The attacks on Indian students were also related to them living in poor suburbs, working late at night for cash-in-hand jobs and being easy targets for their petty thief assailants, not to mention that Victoria had the lowest per capita police levels of any state at the time.

Even the race riots could be explained by an eruption of the opposing tensions of young men and their urban tribes.

In each example, racial prejudice is just one of many factors. Race is no longer the significant disadvantage it is often portrayed to be. In a range of areas, class and socio-economic background are more important. Many of the differences between ethnic groups may have been shaped by racism in the past, but are not necessarily so today. As a result, perceptions of racism are being routinely misinterpreted as actual racism.

The substandard performance by Aboriginal students in school is more likely to be due to poor parenting, peer-group pressure and an inability to be responsible for their own behaviour. They are not subjects of institutional racism. They fail their exams because they do not do the homework, do not pay attention and are disrespectful to their teachers. Instead of challenging such issues, they are repeatedly given the discourse of the victim.

This can also occur in health and policing. As we become more diverse, extra attention to the cultural needs of minority groups is welcome. But too narrow a focus on cultural differences creates anxiety in clinicians, who worry about not causing affront.

The commonality of human suffering, pain and loss should allow us to understand the influences of culture without demanding that ethnic minority patients be treated in a different way. In my experience, Australian clinicians do not overestimate the influence of culture upon health.

I have seen such differences, however, when police are asked to intervene in domestic violence cases where ethnic groups such as South Asian or Middle Eastern couples are involved. Police often keep greater distance in such cases, some believing that cultural factors are at play and the families and communities should be left to their own devices. We do not officially have parallel laws for other groups, but variable enforcement can have the same effect.

The current government has been strident about reinvigorating a highly successful Australian brand of multiculturalism, one that does not get the global attention it deserves. Yet the risk if it strays too far is that tensions surrounding race, which are increasingly more imagined than real, are in danger of resurfacing. The more protection and measures there are to promote racial equality, the higher the risk of encouraging people to engage with each other not as individuals, which is the very foundation of our liberal democracy, but in terms of our ethnicity. The example of Britain suggests that this policy has had more than its share of failures and we would do well not to mimic it.