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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
23:05what was going on
23:20I had in a real time moment of oh my goodness this is what racism looks like when it's right
23:39there in front of me being played out in violence
23:50although 2005 doesn't seem that long ago when you look back at that time we really didn't
23:57understand that we did frame ourselves as a white Australia and an other I see myself as an Aussie
24:17but I never really saw that reflected back to me but what Cronulla did was really put that up in
24:25lights and really put it on the main stage at one stage even in the in the crowd there was a a couple
24:44of young men from Bangladesh that turned up in their vehicle and inadvertently end up among the mob
24:49you know they were from Bangladesh not even from the Middle East
24:58the crowd sensed that there was something happening there was a train load of people supposedly coming
25:17in from the western suburbs so suddenly you've got this mad crowd rushing towards the station
25:26when they got to the station they got onto a train which had just arrived
25:41and there were two young Arabic boys on that train
25:48who had no real knowledge of what was even occurring
25:55there was an extremely violent attack by the drunken crowd on those two young men
26:06craig campbell who was sergeant in charge of the commuter crime unit at the time he pulled out his baton and
26:14he single-handedly they took on that entire carriage full of drunken yobbers
26:21now that's one of the bravest things that I've ever seen
26:30no doubt he saved the lives of those two young men on the train that day
26:49really quickly after that people left the station and they returned down to the beach
27:06you know as a photographer I've photographed a lot of war zones but this was a little bit different so
27:12in the corner of my eye I noticed a man running out of a stairwell and there's like three or four
27:17people chasing him just giving haymaker king hits I realized I've got to keep clicking the victim in
27:24this case ran onto a street and then sort of refuge on the back of a ute and so he was covering his head
27:32and blocking the blows more and more people piling in the fists turn into beer bottles and they're
27:39slamming these beer bottles on his head but at that moment a police officer came in with capsicum spray
27:46but I quickly realized this ain't over and this could actually get a whole lot worse
27:56people started throwing stubbies
28:19and I think one of the first ones that came in managed to hit me on the head because I was covered
28:31in blood I think that's where probably where the policing had then stepped up and started organizing crowd control
28:45it eventually quietened down
28:50but any thought that that was the end we were so wrong there was so much more to come and it was
29:01going to get really ugly again I lived with my community and I know they're not going to take it laying down
29:08and that's the message that I've told people in authority this is not going to go without a reaction
29:16I think one of the untold stories of Cronulla riots is the revenge attacks retaliation
29:34there was so much anger in the community the people in the outer suburbs of Sydney who've now watched the TV news and seen
29:45people 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
30:05gangs 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
30:17he survived the beating but has broken ribs and head injuries
30:21residents 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
30:33when a car pulled up alongside Daniel Gray and his friends
30:36the car doors flew open and um you know four guys started running
30:42one of the guys called he had get those Aussie sluts
30:45at 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
30:54that 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 violently bashed
31:05some with weapons including baseball bats
31:08driven by hatred the Middle Eastern mob was on the move for the second straight night
31:18and they were true to their word at least 30 car loads of men managed to make it into the shire
31:27the men adopted the tactics of smashing and then running
31:31I 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 I heard running and like a screaming
31:49I turned up that's the first guy that throws the beer bottle at me
31:53back into this arcove here and next thing I know there's 20-30 guys hitting me
31:59hit hit hit just getting hit in the head
32:04next thing I can remember there was a steel bar coming up and hitting me and
32:08I don't know what happened from then
32:11police found knuckle dusters
32:17iron bars
32:18baseball bats
32:20other clubs
32:22knives
32:24guns
32:26shootings into buildings and shop windows
32:28really violent revenge attacks occurring in multiple suburbs
32:33and sometimes at multiple places at once
32:35and inexplicably it wasn't just Caucasians who were the targets
32:39Lebanese man six seven car get up in the street in my shop and tried to hit me and
32:46said I'm gonna kill you and hit my shop
32:48I thinking I gotta get killed
32:51I didn't think I can 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
33:12one of the boys I was there and he said doc come on I want to show you something
33:18took me on the side
33:20opened the boot of his car
33:22and he had a blanket
33:23removed the blanket
33:24and he had a couple of machine gun
33:27and all that sort of things and I said listen close it down we don't want to have any
33:33the police are on our side we're gonna respect the law because if it is
33:40all it's got the bigger guns all it's got is more violent that's not the way you build a society
33:46the revenge attacks
33:52was so confronting but
33:54I think what people don't know is
33:56they 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
34:06very high level intelligence
34:07from our own intelligence sources
34:10for instance
34:12information the following weekend there is going to be a drive-by shooting
34:15using machine guns at the
34:17into the beer garden of the North Cronulla Hotel
34:20we conducted a
34:24a covert undercover police operation
34:26that was run
34:27that took a hand grenade off the black market
34:31that was attempted to be
34:32thrown into that beer garden from a moving car going past
34:35and we literally took off the streets
34:37truckloads of weapons
34:39five people have been arrested
34:42for the possession of Molotov cocktails
34:44and we believe that they were intending to use those weapons
34:48they found machine guns
34:50the police found Molotov cocktails
34:52grenades
34:53another 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 rampage through the shopping centre with knives, guns, baseball bats
35:13can you imagine had any of those attacks gone ahead
35:20in 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 could actually have real serious impacts
35:41it's my view that the Cronulla rights 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
36:04that had to be introduced and given to the police
36:08unprecedented powers where they were able to stop vehicles, check licences
36:12at 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
36:27and 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
36:44I 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
37:00police allege he was part of the mob which stormed a train
37:04bashing to Middle Eastern men and you hear their backstory and never been involved in anything
37:11like this before
37:12ashamed of their involvement in it
37:15would 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
37:24sorry no comment
37:26Hattie Kowaja had a handful of supporters in court they didn't take kindly to the cameras waiting outside
37:32on the night of the December 11 riots 24 year old Kowaja 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 Kowaja 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
38:14what was pronounced to me was how the Australian flag was used as a kind of
38:21call to arms for all those people who were really angry
38:24for 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
38:44for me
38:51the 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 that this was a questioning of who we were
39:25and looking to those institutions police courts to stabilize this
39:32post Cronulla we had politicians we had media
39:39even and we had community leaders stepping in it'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
39:53and I think it's not in my lifetime anyway nothing is ugly or shameful nothing is un-Australian
40:00there could have been any beach between Newcastle and Wollongong because this obnoxious criminal thuggish behaviour
40:07has been underway for 10 years
40:09so 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
40:16and keep denouncing these kids and lock them up you think that's going to be a solution
40:20are 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
40:38we 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
40:45I'm Lebanese and I'm Muslim and I also get harassed so it's not just the Aussies
40:49I 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
40:59and 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
41:12we still ask ourselves who are we as a nation
41:16I 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
41:31that was then racially badged by local people who had had detentions were building up and they'd had enough of it
41:40we lived through the coronal days
41:46we lived through before coronal days
41:50and now we are talking 20 years afterwards
41:53without any doubt
41:55it was racially based
41:58you're not welcome
41:59you're not welcome
42:00this is our way
42:01get the hell out
42:02and it was targeted against people of Middle Eastern appearances
42:07and targeted against people that they look anything different
42:13except white, blonde, blue eyes
42:17is there still a live debate in Australia around racism?
42:27yes, there always will be
42:29I absolutely think the Cronulla riots could happen again in Australia
42:35Cronulla changed us
42:58it was something we hadn't seen or had to deal with before
43:04but 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
43:14and 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
43:40you know what, as horrible as that day was and everything it represented
43:45something good actually came from it
43:48believe it or not
43:49and that is how different groups
43:52right around Sydney
43:54came together and said no
43:56in a show of goodwill
43:57members of the Islamic community
43:59mixed with surfers this afternoon at Maroubra and Cronulla
44:03there was such a concerted effort
44:06and it came from the right place
44:08it was heartfelt
44:09to actually stamp our foot and go
44:11this is not who we are
44:13we can always overcome our differences
44:16their religions are different
44:18but their beliefs are the same
44:20all they want is peace
44:22violence is not to be tolerated
44:27it's never excusable
44:28no matter who does it
44:30one of the other things that came out of Cronulla
44:32is just this idea that
44:34you know the beach doesn't belong to the locals
44:37and everyone should be able to enjoy it
44:40and 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
44:49in the same way that the rest of us can
44:52we recruited boys and girls from both areas
44:58we train together for a couple of months
45:01we walk the Kokoda track together
45:04and it was the first time a hijabi Muslims girl will walk the Kokoda track
45:09and I went along with them on one of those treks to the black cat track in Papua New Guinea
45:17yeah 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
45:32and we haven't seen anything like it since
45:35but we shouldn't relax
45:40given recent anti-Semitic attacks
45:42and 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
45:58I remember watching the January 6th riots in the US
46:05astounded by what I was seeing
46:08going way back to what we saw at Cronulla to January 6th
46:15we are taking our hearts
46:17so unfortunately that could happen again
46:20and in a way that's enabled today by our social media is far more connected
46:27we had text messages around the Cronulla time
46:30but as you saw with January 6th
46:32the amplification of Trump's message and how that gets shared
46:36I think the conditions are there this could absolutely happen
46:42If Cronulla happened today I think we would be debating whether it was a riot or not
46:48I 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
47:02and it's really weird to look back at something like Cronulla
47:07as a time that I now think, wasn't it nice that we actually then came together afterwards
47:12I 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
47:22I hope the lessons have been learnt
47:24I came to Australia in 1984
47:28and when I arrived in Australia
47:31I 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
47:48Every nation, as we go by, we go through these difficulties
47:54but we learn from them
47:57Cronulla 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 and I said that can't be true
48:21It was true and then the news just kept getting so much worse
48:26The monster
48:30A fire that was a hundred k's wide
48:33That changed Australia
48:35We needed to know
48:37how the hell something like this happened
48:40Black Saturday
48:43like you've never seen before
48:46If people had been told you have to get out
48:49people would have lived
48:51Next Sunday 8-10 on 9
48:56We're going to be the girl
48:57We're going to be the girl
48:58To be back
48:59Number two
49:00We need to be the girl
49:01We need to be the girl
49:04She's always be the girl
49:06We need to know
49:08We need to go
49:10Not only one time
49:12We need to go
49:14We need to go
49:16We need to go
49:18To the Queen
49:20A birth
49:21In the west
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