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Events That Changed Australia - Season 1 Episode 1 -
The Cronulla Riots
The Cronulla Riots
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00:00Cronulla riots December 11 2005 changed us we want to think of ourselves as that
00:22friendly nation where all are welcome and we want to avoid a small ugliness that exists
00:30and with Cronulla riots we were forced to address it
00:40Cronulla riots were a turning point in Australia's history
00:47people think the Cronulla riots started on the day of the Cronulla riots that's completely wrong
00:52Cronulla was a weaponizing of the flag to represent certain politics that was anti-immigration
01:08a lot of the things that we saw that day we never showed on television we considered them too scary
01:16and it's only now 20 years on that we're seeing some of that vision
01:26but i don't know if any of us thought it would be as ugly as it was
01:31machine guns molotov cocktails grenades
01:35gangs of men of middle eastern origin paying for revenge there was a very quick reckoning that
01:44forced us to question is that what we mean by being a multicultural society this is who we want to be
01:54we woke up to a different country
01:56australia changed overnight
02:10we woke up to a different country
02:23there are very few things that still remain quintessentially australian but the beach being
02:28a free place for everybody it's just a very very australian idea
02:33cornell is a beachside suburb that'd be just over 20 kilometers from the cbd of sydney
02:44it's home to the cornell sharks it's uh where former prime minister scott morrison had his electorate
02:52we sometimes joke calling it god's country or the insular peninsula because it tends to be the
02:56sort of place that if you're born there you never want to leave
03:00the demographics of cronola were very anglo-saxon very white very beach surfy orientated a lot
03:11of people worked and wanted to live and their lifestyle was the beach so
03:15young guys as it was the blonde hair blue-eyed we love australia proud of it and we're proud to be here
03:21i was at the surf club on that day and doing my patrols and observing everything that was going on at the beach
03:30in 2005 what was i listening to there would have been some powderfinger
03:37probably some spider bait a little bit of black betty
03:42black betty was a very masculine rambunctious and had that real rock and roll swagger
03:49i was definitely listening to a lot of that pop hip-hop rmb black eyed peas
04:00god it's actually a great time
04:01cronola it's the only beach side uh suburb in sydney that has the train line that goes to it so
04:17over the years there's been groups like westies bankies sharpies a large number of gang type groups
04:25that have come to cronola and got into conflict with the local surface
04:31and it's about territory it's about behavior down there and expectations
04:35because the surface can be quite territorial in their nature
04:43in 2005 i was i was the regional commander for area of cronola and all the cbd parts of sydney and so
04:48forth and no matter who you are if you turn up here and want to pull that sort of activity on
04:54you will be arrested so in the lead-up to the actual cronola riots there was quite a build-up of
04:59tension and community issues and local angst where there was um lebanese muslim young youth coming
05:06from the western suburbs to the beach area you had some people who were coming from the western
05:13suburbs of sydney wanting to come and enjoy cronola beach as they should and there was a bit of a clash
05:18of cultures well basically if you come to the beach and you yell at people from a distance
05:23abuse then how can you demand respect that's just rude okay they come up to you and asking for
05:28example if you root and they all laugh those sorts of quite offensive comments which were
05:33really taken badly by young girls but also their fathers their boyfriends husbands and and and so
05:39forth they come down here and they start with their mouth and they just bullshit to everybody
05:44they harass our women it's their religion
05:58in the early 2000s it was the young muslims that were involved in the gang style behavior strutting
06:03through the malls in gangs fights with young uh local people um standing over young local people for
06:10their money
06:14in 2005 i was elected to be the president of the la kimba sports club australian of the muslim faith
06:23we were under pressure we felt that
06:27all the bad things that happened by individual it will be put under the microscope and portray that
06:35person is atypical of all of us
06:42harassment the stealing the theft uh was just all part and parcel of every summer
06:49i've been rolled i've been jumped i've been walking home from norvies
06:53just walking through the park i've had three dudes sneak up on me
06:58i don't believe there was any issue on the beaches of cronulla about lebanese gang
07:04or anti-social behavior i believe it was a beat up
07:14people think the cronulla riots started on the day of the cronulla riots that's completely wrong
07:19they started well before then
07:28it was something that was simmering away since 2001
07:32we were having conversations around terror around migration i was experiencing that feeling the
07:48sense that i was an outsider that our communities were outsiders and that people weren't comfortable with us
07:55we were a multicultural nation we were becoming more multicultural but there are a lot of tensions
08:03particularly around australians from arab backgrounds there was this sense that the
08:10combination of their ethnicity and their religion meant that they were going to come to australia
08:18be in little huddles of people and not become australian
08:28and then we had a terrible series of gang rapes in sydney
08:34perpetrated by people who happened to be muslim
08:37and were saying disgusting things about aussie girls while they were carrying out those attacks
08:42and 18 year old girl who gets off the suburban train with some lebanese australian men
08:49when she has been sexually assaulted by 14 men and raped 25 times the victims were all caucasian women
08:57aged between 13 and 18 those convicted all lebanese muslim youths i was quote an aussie pig and these
09:06people were making out that i was some sort of a lesser being
09:09so i think a lot of people would be hearing that and feeling a degree of fear and in cronoa you don't
09:16have the same kind of mix as you've got in other parts of sydney where everyone's living alongside
09:23each other from all different walks of life all different faiths all different cultural groups
09:29you get intimidated by them and you're in your own area and you feel like you can't like be safe
09:33asan mcgravis the lakemba resident claims locals have been taunting him saying he's not welcome
09:41in cronulla i'm just here to have fun have a swim and go home and that's it i want no trouble
09:53all of these tensions were there and it was really interesting to see what might actually make those
09:59kinds of underlying tensions explode and all of a sudden boom the major police hunt is underway for
10:07a cowardly group of up to 20 men who attacked two surf lifesavers at cronulla lifesavers had just
10:15finished an eight-hour patrol at north cronulla when they're abused by several men described as of
10:21middle eastern appearance the lifesavers and lifeguards were there and a couple of middle eastern guys had
10:27been kicking the ball around they came over and a couple of words got said and and i think it became
10:32a little bit of the male bravado then became you know push me shove you almost it then became very
10:38much in your face the lifesavers were bashed around the head were kicked and punched the media then turned
10:44that into an almost like circus like event where it was the sons of anzacs have been beaten by the muslim
10:51lebanese almost from the 9 11 attack the terrorists have arrived in sydney
10:59for anyone to attack our aussie icons our lifesavers who put their own lives at risk is just un-australian
11:09something has to be done i don't feel safe to let my children down on that beach again for many this
11:15was not just a brutal crime but an act of sacrilege young volunteer surf lifesavers bashed while giving
11:23up their weekend to help others in all fact it was a local assault and should have been dealt with as
11:28such but it was a very very big build up in the media at the time
11:36the feeling that that erupted out locally it was massive this attack is not australian and it's
11:41absolutely unacceptable as far as we're concerned it's finally everyone's had enough of it people
11:46around here are going to start doing something about it you know like it's not going to be a
11:49one-sided affair anymore i was a court reporter in the newsroom at that time it was the outcome they
11:54dreaded outraged by the sentence the father of one victim lashed out in the courtroom i was in my
12:02early mid-20s you could feel the tension building there were all these text messages going back and
12:11forth something like 270 000. locals have received a text message asking them to reclaim the beach
12:20this sunday every Aussie in the shire get down to north crinola to help support leb and wog bashing day
12:30let's claim back our shire you look at the lead up it almost seems in a way like it was inevitable
12:39that it was going to happen or come to a head it's pretty much a turf war and it's in danger of spreading from the sand
12:55breakfast with alan joe's on 2gb 873
13:01my suggestion is to invite one of the biker gangs to be present in numbers at crinola railway station
13:06when these lebanese thugs arrive it'll be worth the price of admission to watch these cowards scurry
13:11back onto the train for the return trip to their lairs australians old and new shouldn't have to put
13:17up with this scum when you've then got inflammatory voices in the media alan jones calling him middle
13:27eastern thugs and it just it kind of gave permission for this to play out as it did
13:36you hear people respected are in command behind the microphone influencing young people saying
13:52these terrible things it was awful issuing a final and blunt warning police have told troublemakers to
14:07stay away from crinola tomorrow and avoid a showdown with frustrated locals you will end up with warfare
14:13in the street so let's just cool it a bit
14:22i think we were prepared for something bad to happen but i don't know if any of us thought it would
14:27be as ugly as it was
14:40a mostly sunny day for the state sydney fine with sunny periods and night to moderate southeast winds
14:47down at crinola there was definitely trouble brewing
14:49it was really hard situation to de-escalate and i think there'd been a shift that the this was no
14:59longer a policing matter and the community wanted to send a very clear signal on terms that they
15:04wish to express themselves so you could definitely feel that escalation
15:09i was at the surf club on that particular day the day started off overcast and very much of um i
15:23thought well this is going to be a bit of a dud day
15:30sunday december 11 looked like any other sunday at crinola beach
15:34people turning up going for a swim probably a few more people there than normal but not in the morning
15:48and then more and more people coming australian flags wrapped around people's heads
15:58my recollections now of a lot of young men a lot of shirts off tattoos australian flags
16:04so it's definitely like a humanity and a crowd people having parties on balconies
16:17so it felt like an australia day there were eskies there were flags
16:26there was there was a soundtrack a pub rock australian soundtrack
16:35so on the actual day of the crinola riots my role i was the police commander in charge of the whole
16:39situation it was more like a carnival atmosphere if you like um there's about a crowd of about 5 000
16:45people and people had turned up there
16:58initially it was primarily a protest um it was a protest against the assault on the lifeguards
17:04it's about those three lifesavers that got bashed and it's not cool doing their job down here doing
17:13their job saving lives you know like they go out they risk their neck every week
17:20it was a protest about reclaiming the beach from the
17:23they believe locally terror terrorizing almost of their suburb um by youth from the western suburbs
17:31we're sick and tired of just being harassed on the beach they don't come with their beach towels
17:36they don't come down to have a swim they haven't got their bodies on they come down to harass and
17:39they've been coming down here hanging out at the wall making it unsafe for people to walk around
17:43here at night mate it's just enough we just had enough we love everyone we're not righteous we've
17:48had enough
17:59most people who went there were getting on the cans and then before you know it one knucklehead leads
18:05to two knuckleheads leads to three you know a lot of the things that we saw that day we never showed
18:12on television we considered them too scary too incendiary this is our beach and we want it back
18:28the decision was made that we wouldn't inflame this situation any further
18:36and it's only now 20 years on that we're seeing some of that vision
18:57as the sun then came out all the young fellows were arriving we're all carrying two dutch packs
19:02over their shoulders of beer oh mate and it was just getting bigger and bigger
19:13and louder and louder
19:17as people were getting drunker and drunker and the day was getting hotter and hotter
19:21boys get down here help us out it's all on so it was growing
19:26yeah i remember in some of the where the massive people were just people sort of standing around
19:33it reminded me of like being at a gig right like at a music festival
19:36there was like an aimlessness
19:44it was peculiar
20:00people will not tolerate muslims in our society they do nothing all they do they harass our women they come
20:06here in groups groups of 10 15 they harass and intimidate women if they're going to harass us
20:12then they're not welcome they need to show respect they don't show us any respect we're sick of the disrespect
20:17they're sicky and they try and eat on us and we just don't like it and we've one guy asked for a cigarette and he didn't even smoke
20:24that's why we're all here today
20:26yeah hey you're a sicker get away
20:32that's it
20:35so yeah pretty much we just want them to leave us alone and just and get the out of the car
20:40so by early afternoon the crowd had become hostile drunk whipped up revved up
20:57and i remember the moment when the chanting started
21:03and that felt like a real turning point
21:06everything changed in that moment when no one was safe
21:15i think the words f off lebs was really shocking
21:23hysteria is hyping up dramatically
21:31i think that he's going to blow
21:36what's really strange
22:05about the cronulla riots
22:08is it was a one-sided right it was just this huge mob of mainly young aussie blokes it wasn't
22:16like you've got a gang here and a gang here and they're fighting in the streets of cronulla
22:21anyone who didn't look like them
22:24anyone who didn't have blonde hair and white the crowd was turning on them
22:28these are not thugs that these are just poor innocent people who've probably didn't even know
22:37what was going to be happening in cronulla that day
22:39i mean how frightening for some of these people
22:53who had nothing to do with what was going on
22:55but they looked different so they were chased
23:05as far as they had to go back home
23:18knock out of there mate back out of there
23:21I had in a real-time moment of oh my goodness this is what racism looks like
23:37when it's right there in front of me being played out in violence
23:41Don't ever fucking come back!
23:51Although 2005 doesn't seem that long ago, when you look back at that time
23:56we really didn't understand that we did frame ourselves as a white Australia and an other
24:11I see myself as an Aussie but I never really saw that reflected back to me
24:21but what Cronulla did was really put that up in lights and really put it on the main stage
24:29Hey girls, can you tell us what's going on?
24:32What's going on? Leb bashing, mate
24:34At one stage even in the crowd there was a couple of young men from Bangladesh
24:45that turned up in their vehicle and inadvertently end up among the mob
24:55They were from Bangladesh, not even from the Middle East
24:58The crowd sensed that there was something happening
25:14there was a trainload of people supposedly coming in from the western suburbs
25:22So suddenly you got this mad crowd rushing towards the station
25:28When they got to the station, they got onto a train which had just arrived
25:45And there were two young Arabic boys on that train
25:52Who had no real knowledge of what was even occurring
25:58There was an extremely violent attack
26:02By the drunken crowd on those two young men
26:07Craig Campbell, who was the sergeant in charge of the commuter crime unit at the time
26:12He pulled out his baton and he single-handedly
26:16He took on that entire carriage full of drunken yobbers
26:20Now that's one of the bravest things that I've ever seen
26:33No doubt he saved the lives of those two young men on the train that day
26:38No doubt he saved the lives of those two young men on the train that day
26:52Really quickly after that, people left the station
26:55And they returned down to the beach
26:58You know, as a photographer, I've photographed a lot of war zones
27:09But this was a little bit different
27:11So in the corner of my eye, I noticed a man running out of a stairwell
27:15And there's like three or four people chasing him
27:19Just giving haymaker king hits
27:21And I realised, I've got to keep clicking
27:24The victim in this case ran onto a street
27:27And then saw refuge on the back of a ute
27:29And so he was covering his head and blocking the blows
27:33More and more people piling in
27:36The fists turned into beer bottles
27:38And they're slamming these beer bottles on his head
27:41But at that moment, a police officer came in with capsicum spray
27:49But I quickly realised this ain't over
27:52And this could actually get a whole lot worse
27:58Hey!
28:00Leave him alone!
28:02I hope you're doing your back up, mate
28:03People started throwing stubbies
28:23And I think one of the first ones that came in managed to hit me on the head
28:28Because I was covered in blood
28:34Bring on the fucking dance!
28:37I think that's probably where the policing had then stepped up
28:41Stop it, Grace!
28:43And started organising crowd control
28:45Leave him alone!
28:47Leave him alone, boys!
28:49It eventually quietened down
28:51But then he thought that that was the end
28:56We were so wrong
28:58There was so much more to come
29:00And it was going to get really ugly again
29:03I lived with my community
29:05And I know they're not going to take it laying down
29:08And that's the message that I've told people in authority
29:12This is not going to go without a reaction
29:15I think one of the untold stories of Cronulla riots is the revenge attacks
29:33Retaliation
29:35There was so much anger in the community
29:39The people in the outer suburbs of Sydney
29:42Who've now watched the TV news
29:44And seen people who look like them being chased and bashed
29:48They then decided to get their revenge
29:53So they jumped in their cars
29:55And they headed towards Cronulla
29:57The public are probably not aware to this day
30:00Of the actual level of threat
30:03And the level of violence that was occurring
30:05Gangs of men of Middle Eastern origin
30:08Beying for revenge
30:12This 45-year-old man
30:14Randomly selected by a gang
30:16As he put his garbage bins on the footpath
30:18He survived the beating
30:19But has broken ribs and head injuries
30:23Residents throughout Sydney South
30:25Are literally living in fear
30:27No one knows where or who these roaming gangs will strike next
30:30The most serious incident came outside a golf club
30:32When a car pulled up alongside Daniel Gray and his friends
30:37The car doors flew open
30:39And four guys started running
30:42One of the guys called out
30:44Get those Aussie sluts
30:46At that stage I had one on either side of my head
30:49Kicking my head
30:51The next thing Daniel knew
30:53He'd been stabbed in the back so forcefully
30:55That the knife's handle had snapped
30:57Anyone of any Caucasian on the street were bashed for no other reason
31:02Than the fact that they were Caucasian
31:04Violently bashed
31:06Some with weapons including baseball bats
31:08Driven by hatred the Middle Eastern mob was on the move for the second straight night
31:17And they were true to their word
31:22At least 30 car loads of men managed to make it into the Shire
31:27The men adopted the tactics of smashing and then running
31:30I was walking back from the 7-eleven to just going to get a can of drink
31:40I heard some yelling and screaming across the road
31:43I looked across
31:45Next thing I know some guy had run across from me
31:47I heard running and like a screaming
31:49I turned up
31:51That's the first guy that throws the beer bottle at me
31:53Back into this arcove here
31:54And next thing I know there's 20, 30 guys hitting me
31:59Hit, hit, hit just getting hit in the head
32:03The next thing I can remember there was a steel bar coming up and hitting me
32:08And I don't know what happened from there
32:11Police found knuckle-dusters
32:17Iron bars, baseball bats
32:20Other clubs
32:22Knives
32:24Guns
32:26Shootings into buildings and shop windows
32:28Really violent revenge attacks occurring in multiple suburbs
32:32And sometimes at multiple places at once
32:35And inexplicably, it wasn't just Caucasians who were the targets
32:39Lebanese men 6-7 car get up in the street in my shop and tried to hit me
32:45And said I'm going to kill you and hit my shop
32:47I was thinking I got to get killed
32:51I didn't think I could get away with it
32:54It was kind of a scary time where it didn't matter where you lived
32:59You didn't want to go out at night
33:01I'm not sure that any police force in the world that I'm aware of
33:06Had before experienced these marauding and rampaging mobile gangs
33:11One of the boys, I was there and he said, Doc, come on, I want to show you something
33:18Took me on the side, opened the boot of his car
33:22And he had a blanket, removed the blanket
33:25And he had a couple of machine guns and all that sort of things
33:29And I said, Listen, close it down, we don't want to have any of this
33:32The police are on our side, we're going to respect the law
33:39Because if it is, all it's got the bigger guns
33:42All it's got is more violent
33:44That's not the way you build a society
33:50The revenge attacks were so confronting
33:53But I think what people don't know is they could have been a whole lot worse
33:58I think the police did a great job of keeping that quiet
34:01And it's taken a long time for those facts to come out
34:04Police were receiving very high-level intelligence
34:08From our own intelligence sources
34:10For instance, information, the following weekend
34:13There is going to be a drive-by shooting using machine guns
34:17Into the beer garden of the North Cronulla Hotel
34:20We conducted a covert undercover police operation that was run
34:27That took a hand grenade off a black market that was attempted to be thrown into that beer garden
34:33From a moving car going past
34:35And we literally took off the streets, truckloads of weapons
34:39Five people have been arrested for the possession of Molotov cocktails
34:44And we believe that they were intending to use those weapons
34:47They found machine guns
34:50The police found Molotov cocktails, grenades
34:55Another one was Westfield's at Miranda in the Thursday night before Christmas
34:59We had very good intelligence that there was going to be an attack done on that
35:03And we saw recently what happened with one offender at Bondi
35:06Well, there was going to be 50 people pull up out the front and rampaged through the shopping centre
35:11With knives, guns, baseball bats
35:12Can you imagine had any of those attacks gone ahead in our country?
35:23This is Australia
35:25For a good chunk of Australians, it made them realise that the kind of anti-Muslim sentiment that they'd started to get used to in the media
35:36Could actually have real serious impacts
35:49It's my view that the Cronulla riots were a turning point in Australia's history
35:53Police eventually got on top of it, as they always do, but not without special new powers that had to be introduced and given to the police
36:08Unprecedented powers where they were able to stop vehicles, check licences
36:11At least 30 carloads of men managed to make it into the Shire
36:16Several were stopped and searched by police
36:19I know they've got nothing
36:21You could not get into that suburb unless you went through a police block
36:24Submit yourself to a search and your vehicle to a search
36:27How's it not for?
36:29And it's very draconian level of powers that have never been seen before
36:33A special strike force made up of 500 officers is to be set up
36:39It will be on standby night and day to deal with the specific problem of racial unrest
36:44Go to the back of the truck over here
36:46Done nothing wrong
36:48Ossie Ossie Ossie
36:50I covered courts
36:52And the police did an extraordinary job in their investigations in the days afterwards
36:57So I saw a lot of them
36:59From both sides
37:01Police allege he was part of the mob which stormed a train bashing two Middle Eastern men
37:06And you hear their backstory and never been involved in anything like this before
37:12Ashamed of their involvement in it
37:16Would swear to the magistrate that this is not the person they were
37:19And I always just felt like going, look what you've done to your mother
37:22Did you have a chance to speak to your son?
37:24Oh, sorry, no comment
37:25Hattie Khawaja had a handful of supporters in court
37:29They didn't take kindly to the cameras waiting outside
37:32What the f*** are you doing?
37:34What the f*** are you doing?
37:36Where the f*** are you hearing Brian?
37:37On the night of the December 11 riots
37:3924 year old Khawaja climbed Brighton La Sands RSL
37:43And stole an Australian flag
37:45Then in front of 150 Lebanese men
37:48Set in the light
37:49The magistrate said it was incomprehensible that Khawaja burnt the Australian flag
37:56Three days after being sentenced to 500 hours community service for embezzlement
38:01He described the crime as extreme vandalism
38:04Sentencing him to three months jail
38:09I think a lot of people felt uneasy about the fact that the Australian flag was so present
38:13What was pronounced to me was how the Australian flag was used as a kind of call to arms for all those people who were really angry
38:23For a time I feel the flag represented a racist white Australia
38:37I think there was such ugly connotations that went with anyone who carried a flag
38:43For me the flag that was representative of the country that I was born in you know I once wore the flag to celebrate Australia Day as my hijab
39:01It was something that you know if nothing else represented my country suddenly became a tool of fear for me
39:09And so there was I think a very quick reckoning that something horrible had happened here
39:22That this was a questioning of who we were
39:25And looking to those institutions, police, courts to stabilise this
39:30Post Cronulla we had politicians, we had media even, and we had community leaders stepping in
39:41It's about finding out where we're heading and how we can work together
39:46We could see a 60 minutes grapple with an audience on the issues
39:51There's never been anything quite like it, not in my lifetime anyway
39:55Nothing as ugly or as shameful, nothing as un-Australian
39:58This could have been any beach between Newcastle and Wollongong
40:03Because this obnoxious criminal thuggish behaviour has been underway for 10 years
40:09So what you're trying to tell me right now
40:11That if we were to grab our community, all these so called thugs, how you put it
40:16And keep denouncing these kids and lock them up, you think that's going to be a solution
40:20Listen there, are you serious?
40:22I'm an Australian born Lebanese Muslim and to be told by another white Anglo-Saxon to go back to my country
40:31Well, this is my country, where do you want me to go?
40:36Lady in front, what do you have to say?
40:37We can walk to school for our five days a week, we can get stopped
40:41Three out of the five days get harassed for being Australian walking to school
40:46I'm Lebanese and I'm Muslim and I also get harassed, so it's not just the Aussies
40:50I really, really get angry when Aussies think that they're targeted just because they're white
40:54That is not true
40:55We keep coming back to who belongs and who doesn't
41:00And that conversation has never gone away and we don't come up with answers
41:05Aren't we sick of coming back to this conversation over and over again?
41:10We still ask ourselves, are we racist?
41:13We still ask ourselves, who are we as a nation?
41:17I don't think we've moved beyond that yet
41:19It was not racially motivated at all, it was more to do with the behaviour that was being exhibited
41:32That was then racially badged by local people who had had detentions were building up and they'd had enough of it
41:38We lived through the coronal days, we lived through before coronal days and now we are talking 20 years afterwards
41:53Without any doubt, it was racially based
41:59You're not welcome, this is our land, get the hell out
42:02And it was targeted against people of Middle Eastern appearances and targeted against people that they look anything different
42:13Except white, blonde, blue eyes
42:19They will block out!
42:23Is there still a live debate in Australia around racism? Yes, there always will be
42:28I absolutely think the Cronulla riots could happen again in Australia
42:35Cronulla changed us
42:36It was something we hadn't seen or had to deal with before
42:37Cronulla changed us
42:38It was something we hadn't seen or had to deal with before
42:41But I think we want to think of ourselves as that friendly nation where all are welcome
42:44Cronulla changed us
42:45It was something we hadn't seen or had to deal with before
42:51But I think we want to think of ourselves as that friendly nation where all are welcome
42:58And we want to avoid a small ugliness that exists and we want to avoid a small ugliness that exists and with Cronulla riots we were forced to address it
43:19Absolutely, the Cronulla riots changed Australia
43:24They gave us a moment in time within a place with people who acted in ways that have forced us to question and reflect
43:32And to ask do we want to go back there?
43:35You know what, as horrible as that day was and everything it represented, something good actually came from it, believe it or not
43:49And that is how different groups right around Sydney came together and said no
43:55In a show of good will, members of the Islamic community mix with surfers this afternoon at Maroubra and Cronulla
44:03There was such a concerted effort and it came from the right place, it was heartfelt
44:09To actually stamp our foot and go this is not who we are
44:13We can always overcome our differences
44:16Their religions are different but their beliefs are the same, all they want is peace
44:22Violence is not to be tolerated, it's never excusable no matter who does it
44:29One of the other things that came out of Cronulla is just this idea that the beach doesn't belong to the locals
44:36And everyone should be able to enjoy it
44:39And some very enterprising person came up with the idea of the burkini
44:44To allow women of the Islamic faith to be able to enjoy the beach in the same way that the rest of us can
44:51We recruited boys and girls from both areas
44:57We trained together for a couple of months
45:00We walked the Kokoda track together
45:03And it was the first time a hijabi Muslim girl would walk the Kokoda track
45:10And I went along with them on one of those treks to the Black Cat Track in Papua New Guinea
45:16I just came away from that trek with a really good feeling about the young people of Australia
45:28Cronulla writes it's 20 years this year
45:31And we haven't seen anything like it since
45:34But we shouldn't relax
45:40Given recent anti-Semitic attacks and even just some of the scenes we've seen from neo-Nazis in Melbourne of late
45:49The tension is still there
45:51The neo-Nazis arrived in support of an anti-trans rights speaker
45:55That group met with a counter-protest
46:00I remember watching the January 6th riots in the US
46:05Astounded by what I was seeing
46:09Going way back to what we saw at Cronulla to January 6th
46:14We are taking our house
46:17So unfortunately that could happen again
46:22And in a way that's enabled today by our social media is far more connected
46:27We had text messages around the Cronulla time
46:29But as you saw with January 6th
46:32The amplification of Trump's message and how that gets shared
46:35I think the conditions are there, this could absolutely happen
46:44If Cronulla happened today, I think we would be debating whether it was a riot or not
46:49We're in the fucking Capitol
46:51I don't think it would be any kind of constructive conversation
46:56I think it would be each person's truth as they see it
47:00And it's really weird to look back at something like Cronulla
47:06As a time that I now think
47:08Or wasn't it nice that we actually then came together afterwards
47:13I kind of long for that
47:15I personally don't think that there would be that level of racial violence in this country again
47:20Or I certainly hope not
47:22And hope the lessons have been learnt
47:24I came to Australia in 1984
47:27And when I arrived in Australia
47:30I fell in love with Australia and its people
47:33In 2005
47:36I felt it is
47:38A moment of Australia's national building
47:43Australia has matured
47:47Every nation
47:49As we go by
47:51We go through these difficulties
47:53But we learn from them
47:56Cronulla gave us a moment
47:59And it showed us an alternative future
48:02And we've rejected that
48:04And all that makes you really proud to be Australian
48:0614 people had died
48:18And I said that can't be true
48:21It was true
48:23And then the news just kept getting so much worse
48:27The monster
48:29A fire that was a hundred k's wide
48:32That changed Australia
48:33We needed to know
48:36How the hell
48:38Something like this happened
48:40Black Saturday
48:42Like you've never seen before
48:45If people had been told
48:47You have to get out
48:49People would have lived
48:50Next Sunday
48:518-10
48:53On 9
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