Fraser caused a furore when she said on breakfast television that tennis players Nick Kyrgios and Bernard Tomic should "go back to where their fathers or parents came from".

"It does reek of racist undertones," said Dr Michalis S. Michael, director of the Centre for Dialogue at La Trobe University. "This is not acceptable discourse in a multicultural country where we are all Australians," he said. "This is the sort of language we thought we had surpassed."

But Jennifer Martin, from RMIT's school of Global, Urban and Social Studies, says the comments should be seen in the context of generational attitudes.

Dawn Fraser had been asked to reflect on players' behaviour and comments at Wimbledon: Kyrgios had been accused of tanking in his fourth-round match and argued with journalists afterwards; Tomic was dumped from the Davis Cup team after publicly criticising Pat Rafter and Tennis Australia.

Fraser said: "If they don't like it, go back to where their fathers or parents came from. We don't need them in this country if they act like that."

Nick Kyrgios and his mother responded by saying that the comments were racist.

Dawn Fraser then denied she had been racist. "I'm not a racist person, if you take [my comments] that way then I'm sorry that you take it that way, but I'm not racist at all," she said.

She elaborated on her earlier television statement: "I said, 'If they don't want to be Australians then maybe they should go back to the country where their parents come from'. That's not being racist," she said. "I can see it being interpreted that way ... but it wasn't intended that way."

She subsequently apologised for the comments, saying: "My intended message, which was not delivered as articulately as it could have been, was on a purely sporting level rather than meant as an attack on Nick's ethnicity."

RMIT's Dr Jennifer Martin said that the comments were racist because they reflected a mentality of "go back to where you came from", suggesting that some Australians are not as Australian as others, or that some Australians were "disposable" because they did not meet some unstated criteria of race or cultural background.

"The assumption is that this isn't your home," she said. That raised questions of who was a bona fide Australian, and how long you had to have been here to be considered an Australian, she said.

"Is it racist," Dr Martin said. "It is racist but perhaps it was unintended and more a reflection of Dawn wanting athletes to represent their country in a way the public can be proud of."

Nick Kyrgios was born in Canberra. His father was born in Greece. His mother was born in Malaysia. Bernard Tomic was born in Germany to parents originally from the former Yugoslavia.

Dr Martin said that defining racism could be "a tricky concept". Dawn Fraser's comments, she said, "Are not unusual for people of her generation. She does reflect a generational view. Racism is an ongoing problem in the Australian community."