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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
23:05i had in a real time moment of oh my god miss this is
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
23:43although 2005 doesn't seem that long ago when you look back at that time we really
23:57didn't understand that we did frame ourselves as a white Australia and an other
24:13dog I see myself as an Aussie but I never really saw that reflected back to me but
24:22what Cronulla did was really put that up in lights and really put it on the main
24:28stage
24:31at one stage even in the in the crowd there was a a couple of young men from
24:45Bangladesh that turned up in their vehicle and inadvertently end up among the mob
24:55you know they were from Bangladesh not even from the Middle East
25:01the crowd sensed that there was something happening there was a train
25:15load of people supposedly coming in from the Western suburbs
25:22so suddenly you've got this mad crowd rushing towards the station
25:31when they got to the station they got on to 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
25:55there was an extremely violent attack by a drunken crowd on those two young men Craig Campbell who
26:09was sergeant in charge of the commuter crime unit at the time he pulled out his baton and he single-handedly
26:14they took on that entire carriage full of drunken yobbers
26:21now that's one of the bravest things that I've ever seen
26:29no doubt he saved the lives of those two young men on the train that day
26:36really quickly after that people left the station
26:44and they returned down to the beach
26:47you know as a photographer I've photographed a lot of war zones
26:51but this was a little bit different
26:53so in the corner of my eye I noticed that there was a lot of war zones
26:56but this was a little bit different
26:57so in the corner of my eye I noticed that there was a lot of war zones
27:01you know as a photographer I've photographed a lot of war zones
27:07you know as a photographer I've photographed a lot of war zones
27:10but this was a little bit different
27:12so in the corner of my eye I noticed a man running out of a stairwell
27:16and 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
27:23the victim in this case ran onto a street
27:26and then saw refuge on the back of a ute
27:29and so he was covering his head and blocking the blows
27:34more and more people piling in
27:36the fists turn into beer bottles
27:39and they're slamming these beer bottles on his head
27:42but at that moment a police officer came in with capsicum spray
27:50but I quickly realised this ain't over
27:54and this could actually get a whole lot worse
27:57people started throwing stubbies
28:07people started doing selling these
28:13people started throwing stubbies
28:17People started throwing stubbies.
28:24And I think one of the first ones that came in managed to hit me on the head.
28:30Because I was covered in blood.
28:35Bring on the fucking dance!
28:38I think that's where probably where the policing had then stepped up.
28:41Stop it, guys!
28:42And started organising crowd control.
28:46Leave it alone!
28:48It eventually quietened down.
28:55But any thought that that was the end, we were so wrong.
28:59There was so much more to come.
29:01And it was going to get really ugly again.
29:04I lived with my community and I know they're not going to take it laying down.
29:09And that's the message that I've told people in authority.
29:13This is not going to go without a reaction.
29:16I think one of the untold stories of Cronulla riots is the revenge attacks.
29:34Retaliation.
29:35There was so much anger in the community.
29:38The people in the outer suburbs of Sydney who've now watched the TV news and seen people who look like them being chased and bashed, they then decided to get their revenge.
29:51So they jumped in their cars and they headed towards Cronulla.
29:56The public are probably not aware to this day of the actual level of threat and the level of violence that was occurring.
30:06Gangs of men of Middle Eastern origin baying for revenge.
30:10This 45-year-old man, randomly selected by a gang as he put his garbage bins on the footpath.
30:18He survived the beating but has broken ribs and head injuries.
30:23Residents throughout Sydney South are literally living in fear.
30:26No one knows where or who these roaming gangs will strike next.
30:30The most serious incident came outside a golf club when a car pulled up alongside Daniel Gray and his friends.
30:36The car doors flew open and, you know, four guys started running.
30:43One of the guys called, he had to get those Aussie sluts.
30:46At that stage I had one on either side of my head, kicking my head.
30:50The next thing Daniel knew, he'd been stabbed in the back so forcefully that the knife's handle had snapped.
30:58Anyone Caucasian on the street were bashed for no other reason than the fact that they were Caucasian.
31:04Violently bashed.
31:05Some with weapons, including baseball bats.
31:14Driven by hatred, the Middle Eastern mob was on the move for the second straight night.
31:20And they were true to their word.
31:23At least 30 carloads of men managed to make it into the shire.
31:27The men adopted the tactics of smashing and then running.
31:31I was walking back from the 7-Eleven, just going to get a can of drink.
31:41I heard some yelling and screaming across the road, 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, the first guy that throws the beer bottle at me.
31:54I'm back into this arcove here.
31:57And next thing I know, there's 20, 30 guys hitting me.
32:01Hit, hit, hit, just getting hit in the head.
32:03And next thing I can remember, there was a steel bar coming up and hitting me and I don't know what happened from then.
32:11Police found knuckle-dusters.
32:17Iron bars, baseball bats, other clubs, knives, guns, shootings into buildings and shop windows.
32:29Really violent revenge attacks occurring in multiple suburbs and sometimes at multiple places at once.
32:36And inexplicably, it wasn't just Caucasians who were the targets.
32:39Lebanese man, 6, 7 car, get up in the street in my shop and tried to hit me and said,
32:46I'm going to kill you and hit my shop.
32:49I was thinking, I'm going to get killed.
32:51I didn't think I could get away with it.
32:55It was kind of a scary time where it didn't matter where you lived, you didn't want to go out at night.
33:03I'm not sure that any police force in the world that I'm aware of had before experienced these.
33:09Marauding and rampaging mobile gangs.
33:13One of the boys, I was there and he said,
33:16Doc, come on, I want to show you something.
33:18Took me on the side, opened the boot of his car and he had a blanket, removed the blanket and he had a couple of machine guns and all that sort of things.
33:29And I said, listen, close it down.
33:31We don't want to have any of this.
33:35The police are on our side.
33:37We're going to respect the law because 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.
33:46The revenge attacks were so confronting, but 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 and it's taken a long time for those facts to come out.
34:04Police were receiving very high level intelligence from our own intelligence sources.
34:11For instance, information the following weekend, there is going to be a drive-by shooting using machine guns into the beer garden of the North Cronulla Hotel.
34:20We conducted a covert undercover police operation that was run that took a hand grenade off a black market that was attempted to be thrown into that beer garden from a moving car going past.
34:36And we literally took off the streets, truckloads of weapons.
34:40Five people have been arrested for the possession of Molotov cocktails.
34:45And we believe that they were intending to use those weapons.
34:48They 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.
35:07Well, there was going to be 50 people pull up out the front and rampage through the shopping centre with knives, guns, baseball bats.
35:13Can you imagine had any of those attacks gone ahead?
35:22In our country, this 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 could actually have real serious impacts.
35:41It's my view that the Cronulla riots were a turning point in Australia's history.
35:54A report of 20 to 30 vehicles headed towards Cronulla.
35:58Police 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.
36:13At least 30 carloads of men managed to make it into the Shire.
36:17Several 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, submit yourself to a search and your vehicle to a search.
36:30And it's very draconian level of powers that have never been seen before.
36:35A 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 your truck over here.
36:46Done nothing wrong.
36:48Osney, Osney, Osney!
36:51I covered courts and the police did an extraordinary job in their investigations in the days afterwards.
36:57So I saw a lot of them from 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.
37:13Ashamed 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.
37:26Hadi 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?
37:34Step up.
37:35Get the f*** in, Brian.
37:36On the night of the December 11 riots, 24-year-old Khawaja climbed Brighton-la-Sands RSL and stole an Australian flag.
37:45Then, in front of 150 Lebanese men, set in the light.
37:49The magistrate said it was incomprehensible that Khawaja burnt the Australian flag three days after being sentenced to 500 hours community service for embezzlement.
38:01He described the crime as extreme vandalism, sentencing him to three months jail.
38:06I think a lot of people felt uneasy about the fact that the Australian flag was so present.
38:15What 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.
38:24For a time, I feel the flag represented a racist, white Australia.
38:38I think there were such ugly connotations that went with anyone who carried a flag.
38:44For 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.
39:02It was something that, you know, if nothing else represented my country, suddenly became a tool of fear for me.
39:10And so there was, I think, a very quick reckoning that something horrible had happened here.
39:23That this was a questioning of who we were and looking to those institutions, police, courts, to stabilise this.
39:31Post-Cronulla, we had politicians, we had media even, and we had community leaders stepping in.
39:42It's about finding out where we're heading and how we can work together.
39:46We could see a 60-minute grapple with an audience on the issues.
39:52There's never been anything quite like it, not in my lifetime anyway.
39:55Nothing is ugly or is shameful, nothing is un-Australian.
39:59This could have been any beach between Newcastle and Wollongong because this obnoxious, criminal, thuggish behaviour has been underway for 10 years.
40:10So what you're trying to tell me right now, that if we were to grab our community, all these so-called thugs, how you put it, and keep denouncing these kids and lock them up, you think that's going to be a solution?
40:20Listen there.
40:22Are 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, well, this is my country, where do you want me to go?
40:37Lady in front, what do you have to say?
40:38We can walk to school for five days a week, we can get stopped, three 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.
40:56We 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.
41:06Aren'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.
41:24It was not racially motivated at all.
41:27It was more to do with the behaviour that was being exhibited that was then racially badged by local people who had had detentions building up and they'd had enough of it.
41:40We lived through the coronal days.
41:47We lived through before coronal days.
41:50And now we are talking 20 years afterwards.
41:53Without any doubt, it was racially based.
41:59You're not welcome.
42:00This is our land.
42:02Get the hell out.
42:03And it was targeted against people of Middle Eastern appearances and targeted against people that they look anything different.
42:13Except white, blonde, blue eyes.
42:19Get the fuck out!
42:20Is there still a live debate in Australia around racism?
42:27Yes, there always will be.
42:32I absolutely think the Cronulla riots could happen again in Australia.
42:36Cronulla changed us.
42:58It was something we hadn't seen or had to deal with before.
43:05But I think we want to think of ourselves as that friendly nation where all are welcome.
43:10And we want to avoid a small ugliness that exists.
43:15And with Cronulla riots, we were forced to address it.
43:18Absolutely, the Cronulla riots changed Australia.
43:25They gave us a moment in time within a place with people who acted in ways that have forced us to question and reflect.
43:33And to ask, do we want to go back there?
43:36You 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.
43:56In a show of goodwill, 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.
44:08It was heartfelt to actually stamp our foot and go, this is not who we are.
44:14We can always overcome our differences.
44:16Their religions are different, but their beliefs are the same.
44:20All they want is peace.
44:25Violence is not to be tolerated.
44:27It's never excusable, no matter who does it.
44:29One of the other things that came out of Cronulla is just this idea that, you know, the beach doesn't belong to the locals and everyone should be able to enjoy it.
44:40And some very enterprising person came up with the idea of the Burkini to allow women of the Islamic faith to be able to enjoy the beach in the same way that the rest of us can.
44:52And I went along with them on one of those treks to the Black Cat Track in Papua New Guinea.
45:16Yeah, I 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 and we haven't seen anything like it since.
45:35But 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, the tension is still there.
45:52The neo-Nazis arrived in support of an anti-trans rights speaker.
45:56That group met with a counter-protest.
45:58I remember watching the January 6th riots in the US, astounded by what I was seeing.
46:10Going way back to what we saw at Cronulla to January 6th.
46:14We are taking our hearts!
46:16So unfortunately, that could happen again.
46:19And 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, the amplification of Trump's message and how that gets shared.
46:37I think the conditions are there. This could absolutely happen.
46:41If Cronulla happened today, I think we would be debating whether it was a riot or not.
46:51I don't think it would be any kind of constructive conversation.
46:57I think it would be each person's truth as they see it.
47:01And it's really weird to look back at something like Cronulla as a time that I now think,
47:08well, wasn't it nice that we actually then came together afterwards?
47:13I kind of long for that.
47:16I personally don't think that there would be that level of racial violence in this country again,
47:20or I certainly hope not.
47:22I hope the lessons have been learnt.
47:23I came to Australia in 1984.
47:27And when I arrived in Australia, I fell in love with Australia and its people.
47:33In 2005, I felt it is a moment of Australia's national building.
47:44Australia has matured.
47:49Every nation, as we go by, we go through these difficulties.
47:55But we learn from them.
47:58Cronulla gave us a moment and it showed us an alternative future.
48:02And we've rejected that.
48:04And all that makes you really proud to be Australian.
48:0714 people had died.
48:18And I said, that can't be true.
48:20Can't be true.
48:21Can't be true.
48:22It was true.
48:23And then the news just kept getting so much worse.
48:28The monster.
48:29A fire that was a hundred k's wide.
48:32That changed Australia.
48:35We needed to know how the hell something like this happened.
48:40Black Saturday.
48:42Like you've never seen before.
48:45If people had been told you have to get out, people would have lived.
48:50Next Sunday, 8-10 on 9.
48:549-10 on 9-9.
48:579-9 on 9-9 on 9-9.
48:58We need to know how the hell is being killed.
48:59Or we can escape from 17,000.
49:00On 9-9 on 9-9 on 9-9 on 9-9.
49:0413 on 9-9 off 9-9 on 9-9.
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