Australian police fined two anti-racism protesters who dressed up in Ku Klux Klan outfits outside the Australian Open tennis tournament venue in Melbourne on Tuesday.

One of the protesters was identified as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's nephew, Van Thanh Rudd, a Vietnamese-Australian artist based in Melbourne.

On Tuesday, Rudd and another protester identified as Sam King, dressed in white outfits and conical white hats as a reference to the white supremacist group Ku Klux Klan. They were fined by police and moved on after protesting outside the Australian Open tennis tournament venue carrying banners reading: "No racist attacks on Indians."

[Sam King, Protester]:
"We don't see why Australia has the right to be the most racist country in the world. In any other country would the government have the right to lock up more than a thousand people, innocent people fin incarceration, which is what they are doing on Christmas Island."

King is frustrated by the response from authorities.

[Sam King, Protester]:
"Indians in Melbourne are two and a half times more likely to be attacked violently in the streets and the government's refused both to federal and state government's have refused to call this racist."

Prime Minister Rudd said his nephew's protest was a matter for those involved and distanced himself from the incident.

Relations between Australia and India have been strained due to a recent string of violent attacks on Indian nationals in Australia and subsequent media coverage of the events in India.

One Indian newspaper depicted the Victorian chief police officer in a Ku Klux Klan costume denying any racial links to the attack.

India's foreign minister said last week that attacks on Indian students in Australia needed to stop immediately, while Australia's former military chief said the attacks had a strong racial element.