http://www.crikey.com.au/articles/2005/12/14-1615-5475.html
Cronulla comment keeps flooding in
Date: 14 December 2005
Also in Yoursay...
Reba Kearns writes:
People are saying that the riots at Cronulla demonstrate "the failure
of multiculturalism." If they had occurred in somewhere like, say,
Auburn or Parramatta, areas with ethnically diverse populations, then
these people might have a point. But they didn't. They occurred in The
Shire, one of the most homogeneous areas in Sydney. It is a
monoculture, and the locals were reacting as much to a perceived
invasion of their territory by the "wogs" as they were to any specific
incidents or even trends of violence. What the riots at Cronulla
demonstrate is not the failure of multiculturalism, but the dangers of
its absence.
Alex Flood writes:
Howard must be living in a fool's paradise by claiming his Government
bears no responsibility for the violent escalation of racial
vilification. Even NSW Police Chief Ken Moroney thinks that
governments
at all levels bear a role in this shameful breakdown of tolerance and
harmony. Howard's populist and Machiavellian tactics are a strategic
method of keeping the population fearful so that he appears like the
"Great Protector." One cannot forget the deceitful Tampa incident
which
demonised and locked up innocent immigrants, forming the platform of
his
2001 election victory, in a post-September 11 political landscape.
Racial profiling by ASIO and the focus of anti-terror laws reinforces
the "us vs them" mentality. Howard is infamous for railing against
Asian
immigration on the 1980s and clearly he felt under threat of losing
votes when Hansonism reared its ugly head in 1996, so he shut her down
(thanks to Abbott and Akerman) and took his voters back. Howard's
rhetoric of marginalising half a million peaceful protesters against
the
illegal occupation of Iraq in 2003 differs in his attitude towards the
violent "mob" that materialised on Sunday, many of whom are from a
Liberal voting electorate. When people talk about any race
"assimilating"
into Australian culture, it's turning the clock back to the dark days
of
the 'White Australia policy." Australia has a shameful history of over
200 years of mainstream oppression of any vulnerable minority. To move
forward requires patience, dialogue and tolerance. Australia is a
multi-cultural community that thrives on the creativity of its
cultural
diversity, of which we have an international obligation to promote. In
turn, this reaps great economic benefits for this nation.
Drew Turney writes:
Plenty of people have made passing reference to one of the major
causes of the Cronulla conflagrations in their stories and letters,
but few people have expanded on it. Look at any huge public gathering
in this country (or any other, probably, and without even the presence
of hatred and anger) and what do you see? ... Drunkenness. I wonder
how brave and patriotic the idiots in Cronulla would have been without
a skinful to back them up?
Andrew Lewis writes:
Charles Richardson writes (yesterday, item 1): "The 'poor white trash'
of Cronulla, on the other hand, have got advantages in life that the
people of Macquarie Fields can only dream about. They're rioting
against the idea of having to share any of it with those who have less
money or darker skins." *****! Although that may have fed many of
the minuscule minds that turned up on Sunday. The problem was that a
group of serial offenders made life rather miserable for a whole range
of people who just wanted to go to the beach. These serial offenders
displayed all the worst aspects of racism that the ugly crowd on
Sunday did. These initiators were allowed to harass peaceful citizens
for a period of years. If sharing means allowing young males to
harass, intimidate and gang up on individuals then yes, you are right,
but that isn't how sharing is defined in my dictionary. However, your
attempt to explain beats some of the ridiculous malarkey being tossed
around by the media insta-pundits. W*nkers, every one of 'em.
Chris Lindsay writes:
With all respect to Charles, he doesn't know what he is talking about.
The Cronulla riots are not about "having to share any of it with those
who have less money or darker skins." They rioted in frustration about
having to "share" with a group of young people of appalling rudeness,
arrogance and contemptuous behaviour about whom nothing has been done
for at least five years. Plenty of other people from all kinds of
backgrounds use the beach without any problems.
WD writes:
Charles Richardson writes today that the people of Cronulla are
"rioting against the idea of having to share any of it with those who
have less money or darker skins." Complete nonsense, of course,
Sydney's beaches have for years welcomed poorer people with dark
skins. What the people of Cronulla, and other Sydney suburbs, are
annoyed about is the thuggish, sexist and violent behaviour of one
small group of the community: "young men of Middle Eastern extraction
behaving badly." If this group is brought into line there will be no
more problems. That's not racism. That's demanding respect for the
laws of the land, which this group apparently hold in contempt.
Marnie Lewis writes from London:
As an Australian living abroad, I am appalled at the recent events in
Cronulla. One of the most disturbing aspects is the fact that a
mainstream journalist, Alan Jones, can be allowed to get away with
incitement to racial hatred. Despite attracting some criticism, it is
almost guaranteed that "Teflon" Jones will escape any serious censure.
In searching for a way to ensure that his message of vitriol does not
continue unheeded, I propose the following consumer led campaign. Let
us determine the advertisers whose financial backing supports his
program and urge a boycott of their products by all those who do not
condone his divisive and racist propaganda.
James Baker writes:
I note the throng baying for Prime Ministerial blood over the Sydney
race riots. It must be his fault, because he's been Prime Minister for
almost ten years... right? Well what about Maroubra's very own Bob
Carr. He was Premier for more than ten years. What part did the
policies of the New South Wales Government have to play? His
Government had direct responsibility for the social development and
cohesion in this patch of surfside. When sheeting home the blame, try
looking a little closer to home. Who was it that presided over law and
order in that part of town? Who was it that set the standards of
education in the area? Who controls the department of Community
Services in NSW? Not John Howard. For more than a decade it was Bob
Carr's Labor. For too long Labor has been captive to social
progressive agendas, blindly striving for utopian liberalism while
laying the groundwork for a society that believes the universe
revolves around them, with little or no work ethic, no sense of
responsibility and no respect for themselves or others. Of course, Bob
Carr is no more to blame for this strife than Morris Iemma, who's been
Premier for five minutes. However the more we bow to well-intentioned
but idealistic notions that actually encourage our youth to develop as
hoodlums, the more of this type of trouble we are going to see. What
these kids need is good parental guidance and strong lessons in self-
discipline and responsibility from an early age. Until we get that
back in our homes, schools and streets, expect more of this, and
worse.
Robert Johnson writes from Dili, East Timor:
The people of Australia are surely reaping what John Howard has sown.
Evidently not just ethnic divisions and downward envy: if Bruce Baird
is correct in his observation that the current rioting is, at least in
part, a response to events to which the current victims have utterly
no links (eg. 11 September, Bali bombings), the perpetrators probably
take inspiration from the "logic" that responds to Al Q'aeda's attacks
by unleashing bombs and chemical warfare on Iraqi civilians, or
characterising desperate escapees from totalitarian regimes as
potential terrorists, or Government agencies profiling people
according to ethnic appearance and dress, or "shoot-the-messenger"
sedition laws. This is the not-so-human face of Howard's battlers:
increasingly insecure and marginalised workers (and those now excluded
from work), welfare households suffering increasingly punitive
policies, and a growing population of "have-nots" increasingly
distanced from more affluent "haves," are showing the need for
scapegoats a la Government practice. Charles Richardson reminded us
yesterday of Howard's 1996 slogan "For all of us.=3F So, who's =3Fus=3F?
Clearly not me, and quite probably Howard's so-called =3Firresponsible
people behaving in a very irresponsible fashion,=3F despite his ducking
on the issue. And John Howard says he has nothing to explain? Now, why
would that be?
David Imber writes from Israel:
It's very upsetting to be overseas and see media coverage of racist
rioting in Sydney. As well as cable TV, it made prime time morning
radio in Jerusalem where I think they found the whole idea of racial
violence in Australia quite bizarre. It was also heartening to hear
the (Israeli) Sydney correspondent present a sensitive discussion on
the ills of attacks on Muslims and the hope for an appropriate police
response. While I think Christian Kerr's perspective that it's drunk
yobbos being boys may have some truth, it shouldn't surprise people if
the lunar right is involved and already using it to recruit more
members =3F the pretence of rational debate certainly hasn't helped the
Citizens Electoral Council move mainstream and the concoction of
violence to recruit has been used by skin head groups in the UK and
Germany. Keep up the coverage and debate and bring on the
prosecutions.
Kerrod Trott writes:
The weekend's ruckus at Cronulla can be blamed squarely on John
Howard. He said during the Tampa election "WE decide who comes to our
country." The drunken yobs of Cronulla were merely following his lead,
saying: "WE decide who comes to our beach."
Stuart Glazebrook writes:
The omnipresent and tiresome wailings of Henry Pill, John X Berlin and
Holger Lubotski in yesterday's reader comments (yesterday, item 8)
serve to illustrate the depths to which the chatterers plumb in their
desperate attempts to defend the indefensible. The cloying, feculent
spectre of their multicultural orgasm lies rotting under the Cronulla
sun and still they are able to confidently attribute singular blame at
the foot of the Prime Minister. Such is the wretched and forlorn
picture these three paint of modern Australia, it's a wonder anyone
would bother coming here for a holiday, let alone to live. Of course =3F
and as usual =3F the parents shoulder no responsibility for bringing
their children up under the =3FKirribilli Kaiser.=3F According to Pill,
"it takes a village to raise a child." Yes Henry, but these words were
spoken by one of your own: Hillary Rodham Clinton. The essence of her
message was that all a child really needs is a strong family. So who
really is to blame for the warped values shown by this rabble?
According to Clinton, the WHOLE village is responsible for the raising
of that child. So what contribution did you three make?
Bob Mudge writes:
I read the comments from some of your readers about the mob violence
at Cronulla and it was the usual crap that I expect in Crikey with its
hatred of John Howard and the attempts to make out this was John
Howard's fault. Obviously none of the writers have teenage daughters
or relatives who have been subjected to disgusting comments from these
Muslim low life simply for going to the beach. Nor do they have young
male relatives who, even if they are walking with girlfriends or
sisters at the local beach have been surrounded by five or six of
these clowns and the same comments made to the girls in front of the
young men. =3FAussie sl*ts=3F is one of the many terms that are used.
Obviously these people don't consider themselves Australians. This
doesn't just happen at Cronulla but also on the Central Coast at
Terrigal and the Entrance beaches. What about the bashing of the
lifesavers at Cronulla? Your readers probably think they deserved it
too or have you just decided to forget about this? It's the whole
Muslim culture. Muslim spokesman Keysar Trad said on his website some
years ago: =3FThe criminal dregs of white society colonised this
country, and now, they only take the select choice of other societies,
and the descendants of these criminal dregs tell us that they are
better than us.=3F The same website referred to Australians as sewerage.
How is that for racist and inflammatory? No folks, ordinary
Australians have woken up to the great hoax which is multiculturalism,
the white anteing of Australia from within by you people on the left.
Jenny Morris writes:
Oh dear. Even if a part of what Paul S (yesterday, item 8) says about
"islamic criminal gangs and extremists" is true (sounds a bit extreme
to me), what sort of a solution is it to go on a rampage through the
streets beating people up? What sort of a society are Paul S's
"drunken hooligans," his "majority," protecting by their behaviour? If
you destroy what you value while fighting for it, don't you do the job
of your adversary for him or her? If that's the majority, I want to
proclaim loudly that I'm not in it and don't want to be part of it.
The Australia I know and love is a peaceful place that accepts people,
tolerates difference, and solves problems peacefully, generally with a
laugh and a joke. Paul S, you can have the Australia your "majority"
trashed yesterday.
John Irving writes:
I heard an interesting comment on ABC local radio (mid NSW north
coast) yesterday =3F that Cronulla perhaps shared something with the
riots that occurred during Thatcherism in the UK. The implication
being rapid change under rightish govts affects the behaviour of a
community that feels disempowered/confused and expresses itself
through violence.
Phil writes:
I know everyone has an opinion on this and I think Sunday showed a
very ugly side to Australia, but a clear difference between the
"Australians" at Cronulla on Sunday and the "Lebanese" at Maroubra on
Sunday night =3F at Cronulla there was some property damage, but not
much given the amount of people who turned up, at Maroubra there was
indiscriminate property damage done by 100 or so people looking for
trouble. That, to me, says it all about the difference between the two
groups and why people were angry enough to turn up to Cronulla on
Sunday. It's not the fact that they are from a foreign background, or
even that they don't particularly like us or respect our culture that
irks me. It's the fact that these thugs get up in the morning knowing
that they are going to cause trouble, upset people, and with a bit of
luck, get to bash some poor person minding their own business (as part
of a group of ten or more of course). They damage property, hurt
people, and indirectly harm good people that come from the same
background. In other words, they hurt and weaken our society.
Bruce Graham writes:
Reg Hudson's comments (yesterday, item 8) were... intriguing. Female
genital mutilation is not a Lebanese custom. It comes from some small
subgroups in Africa. And I am unfamiliar with any objections to
nativity scenes from a religion which teachs that Jesus was a great
prophet.
__
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