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“We are treating this as something that is funny and hilarious but also taking precautions,” Mr Zreika said of the bikini march. “Some people may see this as provocation and the last thing that we want is to see anyone being attacked.”

The organiser, Melbourne grandmother Christine Hawkins, has asked women nationally to dress in bikinis and colourful beachwear and rally outside large mosques to show their disgust at comments by leading Muslim cleric, Sheik Taj el-Din al Hilaly, who likened women to “uncovered meat”.

A white supremacist website has promoted the march. Members of Sydney’s Muslim community began raising their concerns last week, with hundreds joining an internet discussion to find a “peaceful avenue” to protect their mosque.

Many Muslim women suggested joining the march in their hijabs and burqas to voice their outrage at comments made by Senator Bronwyn Bishop and Prime Minister John Howard about the way they dress. “We’re really asking people not to bother coming to the mosque,” Mr Zreika said.

“All this is doing is degrading women and giving men a great excuse to have a perv. There are better ways women can express their concerns.”

In Cronulla yesterday members of the Lakembaroos sports club attended a barbecue at North Cronulla Surf Club to mark the progress of more than 20 Muslim lifesavers, who are training for their bronze medallions.

“If we didn’t have the events of Cronulla last December in the back of our minds, we wouldn’t even be conscious that the people here were of Lebanese background,” Community Relations Commission chairman Stepan Kerkyasharian said.

“They look Australian, they are taking part in an Australian activity and you have to ask ‘what’s the problem?”‘

The training is an initiative of Surf Life Saving Australia.

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Ms Velagapudi did not hear the comment herself, but claimed she was distressed when she learned of it.

Ms Spooner denied the allegation. She told the court she had walked into an empty aisle and mouthed the words in extreme frustration at Ms Velagapudi’s inefficiency.

But last week the tribunal accepted the victim’s version of events, saying a number of people had heard the remark.

It ordered the pharmaceutical company Symbion Pharmacy Services (formerly Faulding Healthcare) to pay Ms Velagapudi $5000 compensation for the remark.

She received an additional $10,000 because of the company’s failure to handle the complaint “appropriately and reasonably”.

Ms Velagapudi migrated from India to Australia in 1999 and became an Australian citizen two years later.

She began working full-time as a storeperson for the company in 2002.

Ms Velagapudi claimed the victimisation began on August 15, 2003 and continued for the next year. She said she felt humiliated and hurt, and took a week of stress leave.

Colleagues stopped talking to her and she was moved to another assembly line.

Ms Velagapudi alleged her hurt was heightened by the company’s failure to act appropriately on her complaint.

It did not take her complaint seriously and required her to accept an apology from Ms Spooner that was not genuine, she said.

At the hearing, Ms Spooner agreed she used the word “lazy black bitch” but denied using the word “Indian”.

Symbion’s defence counsel claimed it was a “single incident involving a remark that was made in private and not said to any other person at the time”.

It was claimed this did “not of itself amount to, or prove, unlawful discrimination”.

But the tribunal disagreed. It said the injury to Ms Velagapudi was compounded by the fact that her colleagues already knew about it and had been talking about it.

Handing down its judgement last week, the tribunal said there was no dispute that the remark alluded to the victim’s race, as it referred to the colour of her skin, and was said in “a derogatory manner”.

“The tribunal accepts that once it was made known to Ms Velagapudi, it caused injury to her in that she felt humiliated and distressed.”

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