Labor Senator and former Olympian Nova Peris has revealed the race-related hate mail she receives on a regular basis, posting copies of the mail on Twitter and Facebook.
Ms Peris is a Northern Territory senator and the first Aboriginal woman to hold a seat in Parliament. She is also a former Olympian, having competed for Australia as a sprinter and as a member of the women's hockey team.
She told BuzzFeed she decided she could not let the racist abuse go by unnoticed.
"If someone sends me a racist threat, I’m not going to allow them the satisfaction of seeing me accept it, I’m going to make sure everyone knows how much of a bigoted coward they are," she said.
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"As a senator, I feel it’s my duty to expose this behaviour on behalf of other Australians who are subject to racism."
The hate mail includes a letter that disparages Ms Peris' intellectual ability and political understanding as well as racial slurs.
"You are one of those working class sub humans who wears rose coloured glasses and live in the Dreamtime with an egocentric public image of 'look at me folks I'm an empty tin can with a mouth that makes a lot of n----r noise'," the letter read.
An image at the top of the letter showed the cross hairs of a rifle drawn over her face.
Text superimposed on the image read "Who will come a C--n hunting with me..."
Other images referred to her as "Gillard's Black Pawn" and "Gillard's Raw Black Prawn".
"I've lived a public life for 23 years and in that time it hasn't been uncommon to receive such brutal racist hate mail," Ms Peris said.
"It happens too often. Some of it is casual racism, sometimes it’s outright threatening. But when people put it on paper, I feel compelled to expose it on social media."
Her actions have received support on social media, with many praising her decision to release the hate-mail and others expressing their anger towards those who had sent such messages.
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