Shouts from the desert

The Sydney Morning Herald has quoted the Prime Minister saying that Australia is not racist. While Australia as a whole is not racist, clearly there are some people who are racist and some people who have actively encouraged the riots. In some circles there is even some serious incitement to revolution going on in an effort to overthrow multicultural policies and re-establish the White Australia policy. To deny that this behaviour and sentiment exists anywhere is to avoid dealing with it and thereby allow such sentiments to grow. That is grossly irresponsible, and we must acknowledge that racism still exists in this country and seek to eradicate it.

Also in the Sydney Morning Herald, Gerard Henderson has written one of his more reasonable pieces, in which he gives a rational analysis of the underlying tensions and suggests that part of the problem is that there is not enough mixing of cultures in the Sutherland Shire. This is well worth reading, since nobody can reasonably accuse Henderson of being a "bleeding-heart leftie". Henderson also mentions something that seems to have escaped mainstream media reports - that the assaults on life savers at Cronulla last week followed taunts against the offenders by the life savers.

A twenty-something man of Lebanese extraction explains the feelings of isolation, discrimination and isolation endures, and points out that while he does not support the behaviour of some others in his ethnic group, the treatment he suffers at the hands of others is what triggers it. The trigger for the Anglo-Saxon rioting of the past couple of days is similar, although people who have a Middle Eastern background suffer this treatment more frequently - frequently enough that it is effectively continuous.

None of this is to excuse the conduct of any of the offenders. This violence, no matter who commits it, deserves the strongest condemnation and all offenders should feel the maximum force of the law - and when I say maximum I mean every one of these offences merits a custodial sentence. However in order to prevent this sort of thing from occurring, we must understand what causes it. To try to stop it without understanding the causes is to engage in acts of blind futility, and likely to result in exacerbating the problem.