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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
23:05they were talking about
23:18they were talking about
23:20they were talking about
23:22Back out of there, mate. Back out of there.
23:32I had in a real time moment of, oh my goodness, this is what racism looks like.
23:38When it's right there in front of me being played out in violence.
23:41Don't ever fucking come back!
23:51Although 2005 doesn't seem that long ago, when you look back at that time,
23:56we really didn't understand that we did frame ourselves as a white Australia and an other.
24:11I see myself as an Aussie, but I never really saw that reflected back to me.
24:21But what Cronulla did was really put that up in lights and really put it on the main stage.
24:32What's going on?
24:33Let bash him out.
24:40At one stage, even in the crowd, there was a couple of young men from Bangladesh that
24:45turned up in their vehicle and inadvertently end up among the mob.
24:55You know, they were from Bangladesh, not even from the Middle East.
25:03The crowd sensed that there was something happening.
25:14There was a trainload of people supposedly coming in from the western suburbs.
25:22So suddenly you'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.
25:45And there were two young Arabic boys on that train.
25:48Who had no real knowledge of what was even occurring.
25:58There was an extremely violent attack by the drunken crowd on those two young men.
26:08Craig Campbell, who was Sergeant in charge of the Commuter Crime Unit at the time,
26:13he pulled out his baton and he single-handedly,
26:17he took on that entire carriage full of drunken yobbers.
26:27Now that's one of the bravest things that I've ever seen.
26:40No doubt he saved the lives of those two young men on the train that day.
26:53Really quickly after that, people left the station.
26:57And they returned down to the beach.
26:59You know, as a photographer, I've photographed a lot of war zones.
27:09But 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, just giving haymaker kink hits.
27:21And I realised, I've got to keep clicking.
27:23The victim in this case ran onto a street and then saw a refuge on the back of a ute.
27:30And 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.
27:41But at that moment, a police officer came in with capsic and spray.
27:50But I quickly realised this ain't over.
27:52And this could actually get a whole lot worse.
28:08People started throwing stubbies.
28:25And I think one of the first ones that came in managed to hit me on the head.
28:31Because 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.
28:43And started organising crowd control.
28:48It eventually quietened down.
28:55But then he thought that that was the end.
28:57We were so wrong.
28:59There was so much more to come.
29:01And it was going to get really ugly again.
29:03I lived with my community.
29:06And 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.
29:34The people in the outer suburbs of Sydney have now watched the TV news and seen people who look like them being chased and bashed.
29:48They then decided to get their revenge.
29:53So they jumped in their cars 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.
30:17He 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.
30:29The 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 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.
31:04People violently bashed, some with weapons including baseball bats.
31:14Driven by hatred, the Middle Eastern mob was on the move for the second straight night.
31:21And 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.
31:37I 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, that's the first guy that throws the beer bottle at me.
31:53I backed into this arcove here.
31:56And next thing I know, there's 20, 30 guys hitting me.
32:01Hit, hit, hit, just getting hit in the head.
32:05And next thing I can remember, there was a steel bar coming up and hitting me and
32:10I don't know what happened from then.
32:11Police found knuckle-dusters, iron bars, baseball bats, other clubs, knives, guns,
32:26shootings into buildings and shop windows, really violent revenge attacks occurring in
32:32multiple suburbs and sometimes at multiple places at once.
32:36And 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 said,
32:46I'm going to kill you and hit my shop.
32:48I was thinking, I'm going to get killed.
32:52I 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.
33:04I'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.
33:14One of the boys, I was there and he said, Doc, come on, I want to show you something.
33:18Took me on the side, opened the boot of his car and he had a blanket, removed the blanket
33:25and he had a couple of machine gun and all that sort of things.
33:29And I said, listen, close it down. We 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. That'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
34:16using machine guns at the end of the beer garden of the North Cronulla Hotel.
34:22We conducted a covert undercover police operation that was run
34:27that took a hand grenade off the 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. The police found Molotov cocktails, grenades.
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.
35:07Well, there was going to be 50 people pull up out the front and rampage through the shopping center with
35:12knives, guns, baseball bats.
35:16Can you imagine had any of those attacks gone ahead?
35:20Can you imagine what happened with one offender?
35:22In our country, this is Australia.
35:28For a good chunk of Australians, it made them realise that the kind of anti-Muslim sentiment
35:35that they'd started to get used to in the media could actually have real serious impacts.
35:50It's my view that the Cronulla rights were a turning point in Australia's history.
35:58Police eventually got on top of it, as they always do.
36:02But 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 I'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.
37:01Police 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.
37:11Or ashamed 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.
37:26Hattie 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?
37:35Where the f*** are you hitting Brian?
37:36On the night of the December 11 riots, 24-year-old Khawaja
37:40climbed Brighton La Sands RSL and stole an Australian flag.
37:45Then in front of 150 Lebanese men set in the light.
37:51The magistrate said it was incomprehensible that Khawaja burnt the Australian flag
37:56three days after being sentenced to 500 hours community service for embezzlement.
38:01He described the crime as extreme vandalism, 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.
38:18What was pronounced to me was how the Australian flag was used as a kind of call to arms for
38:22all those people who were really angry.
38:30For 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,
38:56I once wore the flag to celebrate Australia Day as my hijab.
39:01It was something that, you know, if nothing else represented my country, suddenly became a tool of fear for me.
39:09And so there was, I think, a very quick reckoning that something horrible had happened here,
39:23that 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 minutes grapple with an audience on the issues.
39:52There's never been anything quite like it, not in my lifetime anyway.
39:55Nothing as ugly or as shameful, nothing as un-Australian.
39:59This could have been any beach between Newcastle and Wollongong,
40:03because this obnoxious, criminal, thuggish behaviour has been underway for 10 years.
40:09So what you're trying to tell me right now, that if we were to grab our community,
40:13all these so-called thugs, how you put it, and keep denouncing these kids and lock them up,
40:19you think that's going to be a solution?
40:20Listen there, are you serious?
40:24I'm an Australian-born Lebanese Muslim, and to be told,
40:28by another white Anglo-Saxon to go back to my country,
40:31well, 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 our five days a week, we can get stopped,
40:42three 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?
41:16I don't think we've moved beyond that yet.
41:25It was not racially motivated at all.
41:27It was more to do with the behaviour that was being exhibited,
41:32that was then racially badged by local people who had had detentions
41:37were building up and they'd had enough of it.
41:45We lived through the coronal days, we lived through before coronal days,
41:50and now we are talking 20 years afterwards, without any doubt.
41:56It was racially based.
41:59You're not welcome, this is our way. Get the hell out.
42:03And it was targeted against people of Middle Eastern appearances,
42:08and targeted against people that they look anything different,
42:14except white, blonde, blue eyes.
42:18Is there still a live debate in Australia around racism?
42:27Yes, there always will be.
42:33I absolutely think the Cronulla riots could happen again in Australia.
42:48Cronulla changed us.
42:59It 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.
43:14And with Cronulla riots, we were forced to address it.
43:21Absolutely, 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
43:31to question and reflect and to ask, do we want to go back there?
43:36You know what, as horrible as that day was and everything it represented,
43:46something good actually came from it, believe it or not.
43:50And 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
44:01at 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.
44:17Their 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,
44:35the 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
44:45to allow women of the Islamic faith to be able to enjoy the beach
44:50in the same way that the rest of us can.
44:52We recruited boys and girls from both areas.
44:58We trained together for a couple of months.
45:01We walked the Kokoda track together.
45:04And it was the first time a hijabi Muslim girl would walk the Kokoda track.
45:08And 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.
45:24Cronulla writes, it's 20 years this year and we haven't seen anything like it since.
45:36But we shouldn't relax.
45:40Given recent anti-Semitic attacks and even just some of the scenes we've seen from neo-Nazis
45:46in Melbourne of late, the tension is still there.
45:51The neo-Nazis arrived in support of an anti-trans rights speaker.
45:56That group met with a counter-protest.
46:01I remember watching the January 6 riots in the US, astounded by what I was seeing.
46:10Going way back to what we saw at Cronulla to January 6.
46:14We are taking our house!
46:17So unfortunately, that could happen again.
46:22And in a way that's enabled today by our social media is far more connected.
46:27We had text messages around the Cronulla time.
46:30But as you saw with January 6, the amplification of Trump's message and how that gets shared.
46:38I think the conditions are there.
46:40This could absolutely happen.
46:41Listen to the people!
46:44If 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?
47:13So I 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.
47:21I hope the lessons have been learned.
47:23I came to Australia in 1984 and when I arrived in Australia, I fell in love with Australia and its people.
47:34In 2005, I felt it is a moment of Australia's national building.
47:43Australia has matured.
47:49Every nation, as we go by, we go through these difficulties, but we learn from them.
47:56Cronulla gave us a moment and it showed us an alternative future and 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.
48:28The monster.
48:29A fire that was a hundred k's wide.
48:32That changed Australia.
48:34We needed to know how the hell something like this happened.
48:41Black Saturday, like 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.
49:04cover the drop should people have now.
49:08Now go through.
49:09Today we decided to relax those days.
49:10Just a few days ahead.
49:11Today we are left for just a full list.
49:13Exercise is its benefits on COVID Act.
49:14It's a very, very hard to fall.
49:15Once again, let our max.
49:15It's a full list of people down there.
49:17Weá»± ruling some of the girls alike this weeks ago.
49:18They wanted to be reprieز and get out for bigger.
49:19Well, now we will stay down at the moment but they will stay sweaters forunsure Australia.
49:23Yourua is very hard to stay in terms of mood
49:26Amen.
49:27So I spent 10 days ahead and three minutes on bringing forward
49:30Again, we will stay Scareders for the virus over again.
49:31Bye, that's gonna stay connected.
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