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.” Bullshit! 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.” So, who’s “us”?
Clearly not me, and quite probably Howard’s so-called “irresponsible
people behaving in a very irresponsible fashion,” 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 – 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 –
and as usual – the parents shoulder no responsibility for bringing
their children up under the “Kirribilli Kaiser.” 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. “Aussie sl*ts” 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: “The 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.” 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 – 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 – 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.