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00:00Cronulla riots December 11 2005 changed us
00:23we want to think of ourselves as that friendly nation where all are welcome and we want to avoid
00:31a small ugliness that exists and with Cronulla riots we were forced to address it
00:40Cronulla riots were a turning point in Australia's history
00:48people think the Cronulla riots started on the day of the Cronulla riots that's completely wrong
01:00Cronulla was a weaponizing of the flag to represent certain politics that was anti-immigration a lot
01:14of the things that we saw that day we never showed on television we considered them too scary and it's
01:21only now 20 years on that we're seeing some of that vision but I don't know if any of us sort of be as
01:33ugly as it was machine guns Molotov cocktails grenades
01:40gangs of men of Middle Eastern origin paying for revenge there was a very quick reckoning that
01:49forced us to question is that what we mean by being a multicultural society this is who we want to be
01:55we woke up to a different country Australia changed overnight
02:25there are very few things that still remain quintessentially Australian but the beach being
02:33a free place for everybody it's just a very very Australian idea
02:38Cronulla is a beachside suburb that would be just over 20 kilometres from the CBD of Sydney
02:46it's home to the Cronulla sharks it's where former Prime Minister Scott Morrison had his electorate we
02:57sometimes joke calling it God's country or the insular peninsula because it tends to be the sort of place
03:02that if you're born there you never want to leave the demographics of Cronulla were very Anglo-Saxon very
03:11white very beach surfy orientated a lot of people worked and wanted to live in their lifestyle was
03:18the beach so young guys as it was the blonde hair blue-eyed I was at the surf club on that day and
03:28doing my patrols and observing everything that was going on at the beach 2005 what was I listening to there
03:38would have been some powder finger probably some spider bait a little bit of black Betty
03:44black Betty was a very masculine rambunctious and had that real rock and roll swagger I was
03:56definitely listening to a lot of that pop hip-hop R&B black eyed peas
04:01let's get it started in here God it's actually a great time
04:14Cronulla it's the only beachside suburb in Sydney that has the train line that goes to it so over
04:22the years there's been groups like Westies Bankies Sharpies a large number of gang type groups that have
04:30come to Cronulla and got into conflict with the local surfies and it's about territory and it's
04:37about behavior down there and expectations because the surfies can be quite territorial in their nature
04:47in 2005 I was I was the regional commander for area of Cronulla and all the CBD parts of Sydney and so
04:53forth and no matter who you are if you turn up here and want to pull that sort of activity on you will be
04:59arrested so in the lead-up to the actual Cronulla riots there was quite a build-up of tension and
05:05community issues and local angst where there was Lebanese Muslim young youth coming from the western
05:12suburbs to the beach area you had some people who were coming from the western suburbs of Sydney
05:19wanting to come and enjoy Cronulla Beach as they should and there was a bit of a clash of cultures well
05:24basically if you come to the beach and you yell at people from a distance abuse then how can you
05:30demand respect that's just rude okay they come up to you and ask you for example if you root and they
05:34all laugh those sorts of quite offensive comments which were really taken badly by young girls but
05:40also their fathers their boyfriends husbands and and and so forth they come down there and they start
05:46with their mouth and they just bullshit everybody they harass our women it's their religion
05:51in the early 2000s it was the young Muslims that were involved in the gang style behavior strutting
06:08through the malls in gangs fights with young local people standing over young local people for their
06:16money in 2005 I was elected to be the president of the La Kimba Sports Club Australian of the Muslim
06:27faith we were under pressure we felt that all the bad things that happen by individual it will be put
06:37under the microscope and portray that person is atypical of all of us
06:43harassment the stealing the theft was just all part and parcel of every summer I've been rolled I've
06:55been jumped I've been walking home from norvies just walking through the park I've had three dudes sneak
07:01up on me I don't believe there was any issue on the beaches of Cronulla about Lebanese gang or
07:09anti-social behavior I believe it was a beat-up people think the Cronulla riots started on the day of the
07:22Cronulla riots that's completely wrong they started well before then
07:32it was something that was simmering away since 2001
07:39we were having conversations around terror around migration I was experiencing that feeling the sense
07:54that I was an outsider that our communities were outsiders and that people weren't comfortable with
08:00us we were a multicultural nation we were becoming more multicultural but there are a lot of tensions
08:08particularly around Australians from Arab backgrounds there was the sense that the combination of their
08:16ethnicity and their religion meant that they were going to come to Australia be in little huddles of
08:24people and not become Australian and then we had a terrible series of gang rapes in Sydney perpetrated
08:39by people who happened to be Muslim and were saying disgusting things about Aussie girls while they
08:45were carrying out those attacks an 18 year old girl who gets off the suburban train with some
08:52Lebanese Australian men when she has been sexually assaulted by 14 men and raped 25 times the victims
09:00were all Caucasian women aged between 13 and 18 those convicted all Lebanese Muslim youths I was
09:09quote an Aussie pig and these people were making out that I was some sort of a lesser being so I think a lot of
09:16people would be hearing that and feeling a degree of fear and in Cronulla you don't have the
09:21same kind of mix as you've got in other parts of Sydney where everyone's living alongside each other
09:28from all different walks of life all different faiths all different cultural groups trying to get
09:34intimidated by them and you're in your own area and you feel like you can't like be safe his son
09:40McGravis the Lakemba resident claims locals have been taunting him saying he's not welcome in Cronulla I'm
09:47just here to to have fun have a swim and go home and that's it I don't want no trouble
09:52all of these tensions were there and it was really interesting to see what might actually
10:03make those kinds of underlying tensions explode and all of a sudden boom the major police hunt is
10:12underway for a cowardly group of up to 20 men who attacked two surf lifesavers at Cronulla
10:18lifesavers had just finished an eight-hour patrol at North Cronulla when they were abused by several
10:24men described as of Middle Eastern appearance the lifesavers and lifeguards were there and a couple
10:31of Middle Eastern guys had been kicking the ball around they came over and a couple of words got said
10:36and and I think it became a little bit of the male bravado then became you know push me shove you
10:41almost it then became very much in your face the lifesavers were bashed around the head were kicked
10:47and punched the media then turned that into an almost like circus like event where it was the sons of
10:53Anzacs have been beaten by the Muslim Lebanese almost from the 9-11 attack the terrorists have arrived in
10:59Sydney for anyone to attack our Aussie icons our lifesavers who put their own lives at risk is
11:10just un-Australian something has to be done I don't feel safe to let my children down on that beach again
11:19for many this was not just a brutal crime but an act of sacrilege young volunteer surf lifesavers
11:26bashed while giving up their weekend to help others in all fact it was a local assault and
11:32should have been dealt with as such but it was a very very big build-up in the media at the time
11:37the feeling that that erupted out locally it was massive this attack is not Australian and it's
11:46absolutely unacceptable as far as we're concerned it's finally everyone's had enough of it people
11:51around here are gonna start doing something about it you know like it's not gonna be a one-sided affair
11:55anymore I was a court reporter in the newsroom at that time it was the outcome they dreaded
12:00outraged by the sentence the father of one victim lashed out in the courtroom I was in my early mid-20s
12:08you could feel the tension building there were all these text messages going back and forth something
12:17like 270,000 locals who've received a text message asking them to reclaim the beach this Sunday every
12:27Aussie in the Shire get down to North Cronulla to help support lib and wog bashing day let's claim back
12:36Al Shire you look at the lead-up it almost seems in a way like it was inevitable that it was going to
12:45happen or come to a head it's pretty much a turf war and it's in danger of spreading from the sand
12:51my suggestion is to invite one of the biker gangs to be present in numbers at Cronulla railway station
13:10when these Lebanese thugs arrive it'd be worth the price of admission to watch these cowards scurry back
13:16onto the train for the return trip to their lairs Australians old and new shouldn't have to put up
13:22with this scum when you've then got inflammatory voices in the media Alan Jones calling a Middle
13:32Eastern thugs and it just a kind of gave permission for this to play out as it did
13:39Cronulla is a very long beach and it's been taken over by this scum it's not a few causing trouble
13:46it's all of them you hear people respected are in command behind the microphone influencing young
13:56people saying these terrible things it was awful issuing a final and blunt warning police have told
14:11troublemakers to stay away from Cronulla tomorrow and avoid a showdown with frustrated locals you will
14:17end up with warfare in the streets so let's just cool it a bit I think we were prepared for something
14:29bad to happen but I don't know if any of us thought it would be as ugly as it was a mostly sunny day for
14:46the state Sydney fine with sunny periods and night to moderate South East winds down at Cronulla just
14:53definitely trouble brewing it was really hard situation to de-escalate and I think there'd been
15:02a shift that this was no longer a policing matter and the community wanted to send a very clear signal
15:08on terms that they wish to express themselves so you could definitely feel that escalation
15:20I was at the surf club on that particular day the day started off overcast very much of my thought well
15:29this is going to be a bit of a doubt a dud day
15:35Sunday December 11 looked like any other Sunday at Cronulla Beach people turning up going for a swim
15:43probably a few more people there than normal but not in the morning
15:47and then more and more people coming Australian flags wrapped around people's heads
15:57my recollections now of a lot of young men a lot of shirts off tattoos Australian flags so it's
16:10definitely like a humanity and a crowd people having parties on balconies
16:22so it felt like an Australia day there were skis there were flags
16:25there was there was a soundtrack a pub rock Australian soundtrack
16:40so on the actual day of the Cronulla riots my role I was the police commander in charge of the whole
16:44situation it was more like a carnival atmosphere if you like it's fought about a crowd of about 5,000
16:50people had turned up there
17:03initially it was primarily a protest
17:05it was a protest against the assault on the lifeguards
17:12it's about those three lifesavers that got bashed
17:15And it's not cool doing their job and down here doing their job and saving lives
17:20You know they go out they risk their neck every way
17:25It was a protest about reclaiming the beach from the
17:29They believe locally terror terrorizing almost of their suburb
17:34By youth from the western suburbs. We're sick and tired of just being harassed on the beach
17:39They don't come with their beach towels. They don't come down to have a swim. They haven't got their boardies on
17:43They come down to her race and they've been coming down here hanging out at the wall making it unsafe for people to walk around here at night
17:49It's just enough. We just had enough. We love everyone. We're not righteous. We've had enough
18:03Most people who went there were getting on the cans and then before you know it one knucklehead leads to two knuckleheads leads to three
18:13You know a lot of the things that we saw that day. We never showed on television
18:18We considered them too scary
18:21Too incendiary
18:33The decision was made that we wouldn't inflame the situation any further
18:37And it's only now 20 years on that we're seeing some of that vision
18:46As the sun then came out all the young fellows were arriving raw carrying two-dose packs over their shoulders of beer
19:08Oh mate
19:11And it was just getting bigger and bigger
19:18And louder and louder
19:22As people were getting drunker and drunker and the day was getting hotter and hotter
19:26Boys get down here help us out it's all on
19:30So it was growing
19:34Yeah, I remember in some of the where the massive people were just people sort of standing around it reminded me of like being at a gig
19:39right like at a music festival
19:41Oh
19:47There was like an aimlessness
19:56It was peculiar
19:58People will not tolerate muslims in our society
20:08They do nothing all they do they harass our women they come here in groups groups of 10 15
20:14They harass and intimidate women
20:16But if they're going to harass us then they're not welcome
20:18They need to show respect
20:20They don't show us any respect
20:21We're sick of the disrespect
20:23They did
20:23They're sicky
20:24And they try and eat on us and we just don't like it
20:26And we've one guy asked for a cigarette and he didn't even smoke
20:29And that's why we're all here today
20:31Yeah
20:32Hey you're a cigarette get away
20:37That's it
20:40So yeah pretty much we just want them to leave us alone and just and get the fuck out of the company
20:45Go home
20:51So by early afternoon the crowd had become hostile drunk whipped up revved up
21:02And I remember the moment when the chanting started
21:08And that felt like a real turning point
21:13Everything changed in that moment when no one was safe
21:16Fuck off lebs! Fuck off lebs! Fuck off lebs! Fuck off lebs!
21:20I think the words
21:22F off lebs was really shocking
21:25Fuck off lebs! Fuck off lebs! Fuck off lebs!
21:28Hysteria is hyping up dramatically
21:36And I think that he's going to blow
21:37I think that he's going to blow
21:40Oh my God! It's gone! Let's go!
21:46Fuck off lebs!
21:50Game on!
21:51What's really strange about the Cronulla riots is it was a one-sided riot it was just this huge
22:17mob of mainly young Aussie blokes it wasn't like you've got a gang here in a
22:22gang here and they're fighting in the streets of Cronulla anyone who didn't
22:27look like them anyone who didn't have blonde hair and white the crowd was
22:33turning on them these are not thugs that these are just poor innocent people who
22:41probably didn't even know it was gonna be happening in Cronulla that day I mean
22:51how frightening for some of these people who had nothing to do with what was
22:59going on but they look different so they were chased
23:06Go fucking home! Go fucking home!
23:13Back out of there mate back out of there
23:29I had in a real-time moment of oh my god this is what racism looks like when it's
23:43right there in front of me being played out in violence
23:47although 2005 doesn't seem that long ago when you look back at that time we
24:01really didn't understand that we did frame ourselves as a white Australia and
24:06an other I see myself as an Aussie but I never really saw that reflected back to
24:25me but what Cronulla did was really put that up in lights and really put it on the main stage
24:33at one stage even in the in the crowd there was a a couple of young men from
24:49Bangladesh that turned up in their vehicle and inadvertently end up among the mob
25:00they were from Bangladesh not even from the Middle East
25:07the crowd sensed that there was something happening there was a train load of people
25:19supposedly coming in from the Western suburbs
25:22suddenly you got this mad crowd rushing towards the station
25:29when 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
26:00there was an extremely violent attack by the drunken crowd on those two young men
26:10Craig Campbell who was sergeant in charge of the commuter crime unit at the time
26:16he pulled out his baton and he single-handedly they took on that entire
26:22carriage full of drunken yobbers
26:25now that's one of the bravest things that I've ever seen
26:32no doubt he saved the lives of those two young men on the train that day
26:39really quickly after that people left the station and they returned down to the beach
27:04you know as a photographer I've photographed a lot of war zones but this was a little bit different
27:15so in the corner of my eye I noticed a man running out of a stairwell
27:20and there's like three or four people chasing him just giving haymaker king hits
27:25and I realized I've got to keep clicking the victim in this case ran onto a street
27:31and then sought refuge on the back of a ute
27:34and so he was covering his head and blocking the blows
27:38more and more people piling in
27:40the fists turned into beer bottles
27:43and they're slamming these beer bottles on his head
27:46but at that moment a police officer came in with capsicum spray
27:50but I quickly realized this ain't over
27:57and this could actually get a whole lot worse
28:01people started throwing stubbies
28:08and I think one of the first ones that came in managed to hit me on the head
28:21because I was covered in blood
28:36I think that's where probably where the policing had then stepped up
28:40and started organizing crowd control
28:53it eventually quietened down
28:59but Annie thought that that was the end
29:01we were so wrong
29:03there was so much more to come
29:05and it was going to get really ugly again
29:08I lived with my community
29:10and I know they're not going to take it laying down
29:13and that's the message that I've told people in authority
29:17this is not going to go without a reaction
29:20I think one of the untold stories of Cronulla riots is the revenge attacks
29:37retaliation
29:39there was so much anger in the community
29:43the people in the outer suburbs of Sydney
29:46have now watched the TV news
29:48and seen people who looked like them being chased and bashed
29:52they then decided to get their revenge
29:55so they jumped in their cars
29:59and they headed towards Cronulla
30:01the public are probably not aware to this day
30:05of the actual level of threat
30:07and the level of violence that was occurring
30:10gangs of men of Middle Eastern origin
30:12beeing for revenge
30:14this 45 year old man randomly selected by a gang
30:19as he put his garbage bins on the footpath
30:21he survived the beating
30:23but has broken ribs and head injuries
30:27residents throughout Sydney South are literally living in fear
30:30no one knows where or who these roaming gangs will strike next
30:33the most serious incident came outside a golf club
30:37when a car pulled up alongside Daniel Gray and his friends
30:40the car doors flew open and four guys started running
30:46one of the guys called he had to get those Aussie sluts
30:49at that stage I had one on either side of my head kicking my head
30:54the next thing Daniel knew
30:56he'd been stabbed in the back so forcefully
30:58that the knife's handle had snapped
31:01anyone of any Caucasian on the street were bashed
31:05for no other reason than the fact that they were Caucasian
31:08violently bashed
31:10some with weapons including baseball bats
31:12driven by hatred the Middle Eastern mob was on the move for the second straight night
31:25and they were true to their word
31:27at least 30 car loads of men managed to make it into the Shire
31:31the men adopted the tactics of smashing and then running
31:35I was walking back from the 7-eleven just going to get a can of drink
31:45I heard some yelling and screaming across the road
31:48looked across
31:49next thing I know some guy had run across from me
31:52I heard running and like a screaming
31:54I turned up
31:55that's the first guy that throws the beer bottle at me
31:58I'm back into this alcove here
32:00and next thing I know there's 20, 30 guys hitting me
32:03hit, hit, hit just getting hit in the head
32:08and next thing I came around there was a steel bar coming up and hitting me
32:13and I don't know what happened from then
32:20Police found knuckle dusters
32:22iron bars
32:23baseball bats
32:25other clubs
32:27knives
32:29guns
32:31gunshots
32:32gunshots
32:33shootings into buildings and shop windows
32:34really violent revenge attacks occurring in multiple suburbs
32:37and sometimes at multiple places at once
32:40and inexplicably it wasn't just Caucasians who were the targets
32:44Lebanese men 6-7 car get up in the street in my shop and tried to hit me
32:50and said I'm gonna kill you and hit my shop
32:52I was thinking I'm gonna get killed
32:55I didn't think I can get away with it
32:59It was kind of a scary time where it didn't matter where you lived
33:03you didn't want to go out at night
33:05I'm not sure that any police force in the world that I'm aware of
33:10had before experienced these marauding and rampaging mobile gangs
33:17One of the boys I was there and he said
33:20Doc come on I want to show you something
33:22took me on the side
33:24opened the boot of his car
33:26and he had a blanket
33:27removed the blanket
33:29and he had a couple of machine gun
33:31and all that sort of things
33:33and I said listen close it down
33:35we don't want to have any of this
33:39the police are on our side
33:41we're gonna respect the law
33:43because if it is
33:44all he's got the bigger guns
33:46all he's got is more violent
33:48that's not the way you build a society
33:54The revenge attacks were so confronting
33:58but I think what people don't know is
34:00they could have been a whole lot worse
34:02I think the police did a great job of keeping that quiet
34:05and it's taken a long time for those facts to come out
34:08Police were receiving very high level intelligence
34:12from our own intelligence sources
34:15for instance information
34:17the following weekend
34:18there is going to be a drive-by shooting
34:20using machine guns
34:21at the end of the beer garden
34:23of the North Cronulla Hotel
34:26We conducted a covert undercover
34:29police operation
34:31that was run
34:32that took a hand grenade
34:34off the black market
34:35that was attempted to be
34:36thrown into that beer garden
34:37from a moving car going past
34:39and we literally took off the streets
34:41truckloads of weapons
34:44Five people have been arrested
34:46for the possession of Molotov cocktails
34:48and we believe that they were intending
34:50to use those weapons
34:52They found machine guns
34:54the police found Molotov cocktails
34:56grenades
34:57Another one was Westfield's at Miranda
35:01in the Thursday night before Christmas
35:03we had very good intelligence
35:05that there was going to be an attack done on that
35:07and we saw recently what happened
35:09with one offender at Bondi
35:10well there was going to be 50 people
35:13pull up out the front
35:14and rampaged through the shopping centre
35:15with
35:16knives, guns, baseball bats
35:17Can you imagine
35:22had any of those attacks gone ahead
35:24in our country?
35:27This is Australia
35:29For a good chunk of Australians
35:35it made them realise
35:36that the kind of anti-Muslim sentiment
35:39that they'd started to get used to in the media
35:41could actually have real serious impacts
35:55It's my view that the Cronulla rights
35:56were a turning point in Australia's history
35:58A report of 20 to 30 vehicles
36:01are headed towards Cronulla
36:03Police eventually got on top of it
36:05as they always do
36:06but not without special new powers
36:09that had to be introduced
36:11and given to the police
36:12unprecedented powers
36:14where they were able to stop vehicles
36:16check licences
36:17At least 30 carloads of men
36:19managed to make it into the Shire
36:21several were stopped
36:22and searched by police
36:24I know they've got nothing
36:25You could not get into that suburb
36:27unless you went through a police block
36:29and submit yourself to a search
36:30and your vehicle to a search
36:32And it's very draconian level of powers
36:37that have never been seen before
36:39A special strike force made up of 500 officers
36:42is to be set up
36:43it will be on standby night and day
36:45to deal with the specific problem of racial unrest
36:48I covered courts
36:56and the police did an extraordinary job
36:59in their investigations in the days afterwards
37:01so I saw a lot of them
37:03from both sides
37:04Police allege he was part of the mob
37:07which stormed a train
37:08bashing two Middle Eastern men
37:10And you hear their backstory
37:12and never been involved in anything like this before
37:16ashamed of their involvement in it
37:20would swear to the magistrate
37:21that this is not the person they were
37:23and I always just felt like going
37:25look what you've done to your mother
37:26Did you have a chance to speak to your son?
37:28Oh, sorry, no comment
37:30Hattie Khawaja had a handful of supporters in court
37:33they didn't take kindly to the cameras waiting outside
37:36What the f*** are you doing?
37:38What the f*** are you doing?
37:40What the f*** are you doing, Brian?
37:41On the night of the December 11 riots
37:4324-year-old Khawaja climbed Brighton-Lisande's RSL
37:47and stole an Australian flag
37:49then in front of 150 Lebanese men
37:52set it alight
37:54The magistrate said it was incomprehensible
37:58that Khawaja burnt the Australian flag
38:00three days after being sentenced
38:02to 500 hours community service
38:04for embezzlement
38:06He described the crime as extreme vandalism
38:08sentencing him to three months jail
38:14I think a lot of people felt uneasy about the fact
38:16that the Australian flag was so present
38:22What was pronounced to me
38:23was how the Australian flag was used
38:25as a kind of call to arms
38:26for all those people who were really angry
38:34For a time
38:35I feel the flag represented
38:38a racist white Australia
38:41I think there was such
38:43ugly connotations that went with anyone who carried a flag
38:48For me, the flag that was representative of the country that I was born in
39:00you know, I once wore the flag to celebrate Australia Day as my hijab
39:05It was something that, you know, if nothing else represented my country
39:11I suddenly became a tool of fear for me
39:21And so there was, I think, a very quick reckoning
39:24that something horrible had happened here
39:27that this was a questioning of who we were
39:29and looking to those institutions
39:32police, courts, to stabilise this
39:40Post-Cronulla we had politicians, we had media even
39:43and we had community leaders stepping in
39:45It's about finding out where we're heading
39:48and how we can work together
39:50We could see a 60 minutes grapple with an audience on the issues
39:55There's never been anything quite like it
39:57Not in my lifetime anyway
39:59Nothing is ugly or shameful
40:01Nothing is un-Australian
40:03This could have been any beach between Newcastle and Wollongong
40:07because this obnoxious criminal thuggish behaviour
40:11has been underway for 10 years
40:13So what you're trying to tell me right now
40:15that if we were to grab our community
40:17all these so-called thugs, how you put it
40:20and keep denouncing these kids
40:22and lock them up
40:23you think that's going to be a solution?
40:25Listen there
40:26Are you serious?
40:28I'm an Australian-born Lebanese Muslim
40:30and to be told by another white Anglo-Saxon
40:34to go back to my country
40:35well this is my country
40:37where do you want me to go?
40:41Lady in front, what do you have to say?
40:42We can walk to school for our five days a week
40:44we can get stopped
40:46three out of the five days
40:47get harassed for being Australian
40:49walking to school
40:50I'm Lebanese and I'm Muslim
40:51and I also get harassed
40:52so it's not just the Aussies
40:54I really, really get angry
40:56when Aussies think that they're targeted
40:57just because they're white
40:58that is not true
41:00We keep coming back to who belongs and who doesn't
41:04and that conversation has never gone away
41:07and we don't come up with answers
41:10Aren't we sick of coming back to this conversation
41:13over and over again?
41:14We still ask ourselves, are we racist?
41:17We still ask ourselves, who are we as a nation?
41:21I don't think we've moved beyond that yet
41:23It was not racially motivated at all
41:31it was more to do with the behaviour
41:34that was being exhibited
41:36that was then racially badged
41:38by local people who had had detentions
41:41were building up and they'd had enough of it
41:43We live through the coronal days
41:51we live through before coronal days
41:54and now we are talking 20 years afterwards
41:58without any doubt
42:00it was racially based
42:03You're not welcome this jail land
42:05get the hell out
42:07and it was targeted against people
42:10of Middle Eastern appearances
42:12and targeted against people
42:14that they look anything different
42:16except white, blonde, blue eyes
42:22Is there still a live debate in Australia around racism?
42:32Yes, there always will be
42:37I absolutely think the Cronulla riots
42:39could happen again in Australia
42:52Cronulla changed us
43:03It was something we hadn't seen
43:06or had to deal with before
43:09but I think we want to think of ourselves
43:11as that friendly nation
43:13where all are welcome
43:15and we want to avoid
43:16a small ugliness that exists
43:19and with Cronulla riots
43:21we were forced to address it
43:26Absolutely, the Cronulla riots changed Australia
43:29They gave us a moment in time
43:31within a place
43:32with people who acted in ways
43:35that have forced us to question and reflect
43:37and to ask
43:38do we want to go back there?
43:45You know what?
43:46As horrible as that day was
43:48and everything it represented
43:50something good actually came from it
43:52believe it or not
43:54and that is how different groups
43:56right around Sydney
43:58came together and said no
44:00In a show of goodwill
44:01members of the Islamic community
44:03mixed with surfers this afternoon
44:05at Maroubra and Cronulla
44:07There was such a concerted effort
44:10and it came from the right place
44:12it was heartfelt
44:13to actually stamp our foot
44:15and go this is not who we are
44:17we can always overcome our differences
44:20Their religions are different
44:22but their beliefs are the same
44:24all they want is peace
44:26violence is not to be tolerated
44:30it's never excusable
44:32no matter who does it
44:33One of the other things that came out of Cronulla
44:36is just this idea that
44:38you know the beach doesn't belong to the locals
44:41and everyone should be able to enjoy it
44:44and some very enterprising person came up with the idea of the burkini
44:48to allow women of the Islamic faith to be able to enjoy the beach in the same way that the rest of us can
44:59We recruited boys and girls from both areas
45:02we trained together for a couple of months
45:05we walked the Kokoda track together
45:08and it was the first time a Hijabi Muslim girl will walk the Kokoda track
45:13and I went along with them on one of those treks to the black cat track in Papua New Guinea
45:21you alright?
45:22I just came away from that trek
45:25with a really good feeling about the young people of Australia
45:33Cronulla writes it's 20 years this year
45:37and we haven't seen anything like it since
45:40but we shouldn't relax
45:43given recent anti-Semitic attacks
45:47and even just some of the scenes we've seen from neo-Nazis in Melbourne of late
45:53the tension is still there
45:56the neo-Nazis arrived in support of an anti-trans rights speaker
46:00that group met with a counter-protest
46:05I remember watching the January 6 rights in the US
46:10astounded by what I was seeing
46:12going way back to what we saw at Cronulla to January 6th
46:22so unfortunately that could happen again
46:24in a way that's enabled today by our social media is far more connected
46:31we had text messages around the Cronulla time
46:34but as you saw with January 6th the amplification of Trump's message and how that gets shared
46:43I think the conditions are there this could absolutely happen
46:45if Cronulla happened today I think we would be debating whether it was a riot or not
46:57it would be any kind of constructive conversation
47:01I think it would be each person's truth as they see it
47:05and it's really weird to look back at something like Cronulla as a time that I now think
47:12or wasn't it nice that we actually then came together afterwards
47:17I kind of long for that
47:20I personally don't think that there would be that level of racial violence in this country again
47:24or I would certainly hope not
47:26and hope the lessons have been learnt
47:29I came to Australia in 1984
47:32and when I arrived in Australia
47:35I fell in love with Australia and its people
47:38in 2005
47:40I felt it is a moment of Australia's national building
47:48Australia has matured
47:52every nation
47:54every nation
47:55as we go by
47:56we go through these difficulties
47:59but we learn from them
48:01Cronulla gave us a moment
48:04and it showed us an alternative future
48:06and we've rejected that
48:08and all that makes you really proud to be Australian
48:1114 people had died
48:22and I said
48:24that can't be true
48:25it was true
48:27and then
48:28the news just kept getting so much worse
48:32the monster
48:33a fire
48:34that was a hundred k's wide
48:36that changed Australia
48:39we needed to know
48:41how the hell
48:42something like this happened
48:44Black Saturday
48:46like you've never seen before
48:49if people had been told
48:51you have to get out
48:53people would have lived
48:55next Sunday 8-10 on 9
49:09quite a few more
49:12this came out
49:15because they had red
49:17Dios
49:18they were dead
49:19and they found
49:20really peaceful
49:21that all of them
49:22were done
49:23does not yet
49:24it was a very small
49:25which places there
49:26should not yet
49:27in the air
49:28that was great
49:29there
49:30they still put
49:31their eyes
49:32and your fingers
49:34are ready
49:35and we want to
49:37that
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