Could Cronulla happen again?
A comparative timeline of current media coverage of so called African gangs compared to the Cronulla riots.
article-article-bodyAbout the Author
Tips and Murmurs Editor @theshufflediary
Charlie Lewis pens Crikey's Tips and Murmurs column and also writes on industrial relations, politics and culture. He previously worked across government and unions and was a researcher on RN's Daily Planet. He currently co-hosts Spin Cycle on Triple R radio.
Well Dutton is doing his best to provoke a riot either by Sudanese or the flag waving pseudo patriotic scum. He would love it. What I would love to see is some actual facts on how big the issue is. Of course everyone was worried in the poll. The papers and Dutton were telling them to be. How many of these events are outside the Sudanese community. How many people of African origin are there anyway compared to the Sudanese kids? Most of the few Africans of various sorts that I know are beaut and my daughter worked with some expats on mine sites, a real Heinz 57 mix and they were great folks.
Old Greybearded One that’s the problem with people like Dutton, they use made up, hearsay or third hand rumours to bolster the nonsensical myth’s around the “criminal” element, which is always easy to do, when you’ve never met them & have really no real experience of this particular cultural group within the society you’re supposed to be representing & working for.
Anyone believing any so-called news from the names assembled here must either be so far Right they’ve become Left or gullible beyond belief. How Malcolm Turnbull was so mentally deficient as to anoint Peter Dutton to his present portfolio of power and lust should be the subject of a royal commission.
Naturally people like Dutton and Turnbull and Cory Bernardi would be well aware that no news of dire importance happens during the last two weeks in January, in Melbourne because everyone is besotted by the tennis at the Australian Open. And anyone wanting to spring some fake news (apologies Donald) would choose precisely this moment.
Exactly Venise, the good thing about this is most people are probably still away on holidays also, so there’s a very good chance that much of Duttons nonsense is likely to fall onto deaf ears, as people are more likely to switch off any medjia wittering that they try to pass off as news at this particular time frame.
Charlie I was living in Sydney at the time. The Cronulla riots were a build up over a very long time frame, with a lot of context that the Daily Telegraph didn’t grasp. I can tell you this it was a reaction to racial attitudes & cultural mores that set a lot of the violence & behaviour off over that short period of time, with very different cultures converging in an area which had seen a lot of change in a short period of time. I had friends that lived in the area & they said that much of what went on actually was inflamed by the gutter press, the shock jocks that were quite happy to hide behind their microphones & inflame the situation, with the usual suspects spouting nonsense that they know nothing about. With the calling into the area of RW groups & those that were just looking for a fight, the inclusion of local gangs was used to settle down much of the outside influences that really had no reason to be there. Much of what went on was due to (I suppose what you would call hunting down a story) a slow news week, for the DT. Those reporters that lived locally & that actually reported the truth of the situation prior to & afterwards, saw things very differently from the news hacks from the DT, that were wanting a story to happen no matter what & be able to report about. The interesting thing that happened was that the Cronulla riots were over in a very short time & life went back to normal for most residents/those that worked in the area very quickly. Unfortunately (I should know as I worked for a newsagent at the time) the story was kept live by Newscrap for weeks after, especially through the likes of Devine et al in their OP ed pieces that seemed to float into view every couple of days, or the reporting of some bit of “news” that kept the story alive. I hate to tell you Charlie, I think that this is a dog in a manger deal & that if the medjia lets itself get sucked in again, more fool them, because I would humbly suggest people are a hell of a lot smarter than many of these newspaper hacks & know exactly what’s happening & there’s a very good chance it will either end badly for the Herald Sun, or be a damp squib on Australia day fireworks display. So rather than get caught up in the nonsense around what actually really was going on, how bout someone call Dutton for what he really is, which is a spineless, wannabe whose just looking for more shameless, self promotion.
Is it true that verbal abuse of women because of their beach attire (bikinis?) preceded the Cronulla riots? From 2000 miles away that’s the story I heard. If so who were the abusers?