THE CRONULLA RIOTS – THE INSIDE STORY – MARK GOODWIN

In The Cronulla Riots – The Untold Story, Mark Goodwin and Craig Scully, retired NSW Police Assistant Commissioner and former NSW Police Minister respectively, explore what really happened as opposed to the press and media versions of the events.  As the key figures tasked with restoring order during the chaos, they have revealed that much of the media reporting was “fake news”. They have challenge the popular media and academic driven narrative, which has shaped public opinion over the years, that these events were solely driven by Caucasian xenophobia. On Monday 4 November, Craig Scully and Mark Goodwin addressed The Sydney Institute to put their case.

THE CRONULLA RIOTS – THE INSIDE STORY

MARK GOODWIN

On Sunday 11 December 2005, about 5000 people gathered at Cronulla beach after hundreds of thousands of text messages were broadcast to “Reclaim the Beach”, with some urging participation in “Leb & Wog bashing”. The day was primarily a protest, but under the hot summer sun the alcohol took hold and the event denigrated into racist chants, slogans, assaults and civil unrest. There were dozens of reporters and cameras present on the day who caught every angle of this imagery, which has now become the sole focus of reporting, literature and public opinion on the events. It is the “go-to” reference for showing the worst of Australian racism. But, is this imagery the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

Build-up to a “riot”

Cronulla is the only Sydney Beach on a train line, providing a unique accessibility from other areas. For years, locals have resented “their” beach being overrun on weekends by “others”. Dating back to the 1960s there has been conflict on the beach at various times between local “Surfies” and visiting groups including “Rockers”, “Sharpies”, “Westies” (from Sydney’s western suburbs) and “Bankies” (from Bankstown).

On closer analysis, all these conflicts and fights over the decades have emanated from the exact same themes – i.e. differences in dress, cultural mores, mannerisms & behaviour; gang-style offensive conduct; attempts to dominate the spatial domain; incivility; male preening; misogynistic behaviour toward local females; verbal and physical altercations; disrespect toward locals and litter left on the beach at the end of visits. On these prior occasions all participants were Caucasians, so the events were never “badged” as racist. However, in the early 2000s a newcomer emerged at Cronulla Beach – Lebanese Muslims from the Canterbury-Bankstown area. There was the exact same behaviour as previously described, but this time it was “F-off Lebs”, instead of “F-off Rockers, Sharpies, Westies or Bankies”. So that became instantly labelled “Caucasian Racism”. But was this actually deep-seated racism in Australia? Was racism really the sole cause for the uprising? Or were deeper causal factors at play of a more behavioural related nature? Was this name-calling a “badge” put on it to corrale the troops, no different than the “F-off” given to other groups in the past? My co-author will explore these concepts in greater detail. In our book, we conclude that labelling the event solely as racially inspired is a superficial and simplistic approach, which fails to peel back the onion layers to discover the real underlying causal factors.

For months young men of Arabic Muslim decent had been coming to Cronulla Beach of a weekend in “hotted up” cars. They dressed not in beachwear but in designer track-suits, with buzz-cut hairstyles, dripping with jewellery. A lot were gang members well known to police. They were not at all representative of their humble and respectful wider culture, large numbers of whom had attended and enjoyed Cronulla Beach for many years with their families with no issues. These youth escaped to the beach of a weekend from the much hotter western suburbs of Sydney, where their gangs were constantly targeted by police from their own area. They were mostly not at Cronulla for the sun, sand and beach or to surf. They were there to dominate, assert “their” way, intimidate and impress local “Skippy” girls. Strict cultural upbringing meant that a majority of women from their own families were covered head-to-toe as part of religious belief, but here at the beach bikini clad girls by the hundreds were on display. They acted like gangsters. They dominated the beach carpark and strutted the nearby mall intimidating passers-by. Aggressive verbal exchanges often took place with locals, which sometimes lead to violent confrontations. There were misogynistic comments made including, “Have you ever sucked on a Lebanese cucumber” and “Have you ever tasted Lebanese honey”. This behaviour enraged the locals over an extended period of time.

However, this causal behaviour seems to have been cut from the narrative over the years by journalists, academics and social commentators alike, who instead prefer to solely focus on the daytime “riot” at Cronulla whilst labelling the whole event as Caucasian xenophobia. Instead, the narrative shaped has left out the real causal behaviour shown during the build-up, as-well-as the “Arabic Racism” displayed during the ten-fold worse revenge attacks (outlined below), of which little imagery exists. Via this narrowed approach, the real story has been “skewed” and these factual events have instead been almost erased from history.

The “flash-point” came when Surf Life-Savers at Cronulla were assaulted by a group of Middle- Eastern men from the western suburbs of Sydney a week before the “reclaim the beach” protest. The media at that time went into full overdrive giving the incident saturation coverage. Unlike when the media pack later decided the events at Cronulla were all Caucasian Racism, the “Walkley Award” winning journalism at that time was to portray the assault of this “Aussie Icon” as an assault on the very core of what it meant to be Australian, the bashing of our “Sons of Anzacs”, the bronzed zinc cream wearing lifeguards who volunteered their time to save lives over summer on our cherished beaches. The disproportionate media response to this local level common assault whipped up a seismic response, which was extreme and surreal upon reflection.

The media rode and fanned the flames of racial discontent in the week-long build-up to the “riot” to a point that white-supremacist and patriot groups began to hijack the situation, attending the Cronulla area with spruikers handing out pamphlets. Also, hundreds-of-thousands of mass text messages began to circulate to attend Cronulla that weekend to “Reclaim the Beach”, including some texts inflaming “Lebo & Wog bashing day”.

The Day of the “riot”

Police were well prepared for what lay ahead, with extensive planning and commitment of resources to this potential High Risk public order event. But in actual fact, most of the day was like the typical Australia Day at Cronulla. There were BBQ’s cooking, flag waving and patriotic singing of the Australian Anthem and Waltzing Matilda. A pre-booked ceremony was held by the local North Cronulla Surf Club to launch their new surf boat. The gathered crowd cheered on. The day was initially a carnival-like atmosphere with no real crowd leaders, direction or purpose other than to make a statement to the wider world that they were there to “take back the beach”.

But none of this was reported. Why? Did it not suit the media pack agenda perhaps? In fact, by half-way through the day the looks on journalists faces was palpable, as if they’d all be sacked when going back to their editors that evening with nothing to show for their prior week’s massive beat-up.

Enter the white-supremacist spruikers! Throughout the morning huge “jacked-up” Utes began to arrive with Eureka Stockade flags in the rear windows. What stepped out of those Utes were not locals, but hard core patriots there to hijack the day. And hijack it they did. These spruikers began chants in the crowd and played up to the waiting cameras. Most of the day was actually the Cops watching the 5000 strong rubbernecking crowd, who in-turn were watching these spruikers. In fact, the front cover of our book is exactly that and is in fact representative of what the crowd actually looked like for most of the day. A sole spruiker can be seen with his arms in the air surrounded by media cameras and furry microphones on poles, trying to capture the moment from various close-up angles. He is wearing a red, white & blue/stars & stripes bandanna on his head. This attire is never seen at Cronulla Beach nor worn by locals.

By mid-afternoon, under the hot summer sun, alcohol took control and a small number of the crowd engaged in what could only be described as disgraceful racist chants, drunken poor behaviour and mob-violence. There were a number of scuffles and disgraceful racist assaults on Middle Eastern people took place. One particular incident occurred on a train at Cronulla Railway Station, where a number of Caucasian young males assaulted two young Middle Eastern men. The imagery captured of the big Sgt Craig Campbell swathing his way through the mob with his police baton drawn is ingrained in Australian history. We interview Sgt Campbell in the book. He calls his police baton “Milo”. When asked why, he retorts, “It’s marvellous what a difference Milo makes.”

We strongly contest the popular peddled perception that the whole 5000 strong crowd acted in this manner the whole day. In fact, most were just rubbernecks and did not participate. The reality is that no more than about 200 of the crowd took place in this abysmal behaviour. However, almost every Sydney journalist was present on the day with dozens of TV cameras recording professional close-up footage of every isolated incident from numerous angles. Over the course of an entire day these few examples of poor behaviour were captured. Whilst all the imagery seen is real, that night for the evening news these isolated incidents were strung together in quick succession with excited newsreader voiceover to create the impression that the whole 5000 strong crowd behaved like that the entire day. This was not the case and we submit this was over-exaggerated “fake” news. What was shown on that evening’s news rightly enraged the Western Suburbs Arabic Muslim community. We have little doubt this was a strong contributing factor to the ‘revenge attacks’ that followed.

The media often act with a pack-like mentality. By late afternoon on the day of the “riot” the media pack decided it was all over, and they left to return to their respective studios to produce the sensationalist evening news. However, they were literally “out to dinner” and missed the main event, the “revenge attacks”, which were ten-fold worse in terms of size, scope and racial violence. As a result, there is very little footage of these revenge attacks and we are instead left with only imagery of the daytime mob-violence by Caucasian youth at Cronulla. We challenge any person to Google “Cronulla Riots” and select “Images”. All you will find is exactly what I have described. There is virtually no imagery of the horrendously larger “revenge attacks”, so it is almost as if this didn’t happen and is erased from history. The public have a very limited understanding of the frightening extent of what really took place during these ‘revenge attacks’, which is for the first time revealed in the book. As a result of this massive imbalance in imagery of the events that actually took place, academics, journalists and social commentators over the years have solely focussed on the readily available footage of the daytime incidents, without digging a little deeper and peeling back the onion layers to find out the real causal factors at Cronulla, whilst preparing their articles, tomes, documentaries and scholarly pieces on the events.

The “revenge attacks”

The extent of what police dealt with during these “revenge attacks” is relatively unknown by the wider public to this day. For literally weeks on end police dealt with extreme risk intelligence whilst deploying thousands of resources to quell the violence in covert and overt public order police operations the size, scope and complexity of which this country has not seen prior, nor since. Yet virtually zero of this has ever been reported, which has severely skewed the balanced public knowledge and opinion of what really occurred.

Most of the violence and property damage in the revenge attacks occurred in the first few days after the initial event at Cronulla. However, intelligence continued to be received for weeks of possible or potential conspiracies to undertake further attacks and property damage.

A number of suburbs in Sydney were raided by convoys of up to 50 cars of Middle Eastern youth armed with baseball bats, knives, guns and other weapons. Suburbs such as Maroubra, Arncliffe, Ramsgate, Brighton Le-Sands, Cronulla and Woolooware were indiscriminatingly and randomly targeted by these mobile mobs. It was an extremely difficult time for police trying to predict and react to where these mobs were both emanating from and targeting. People were base-ball-batted, stabbed, bashed and beaten for no other reason than they were Caucasian. The windows of hundreds of cars, residences and shops were smashed.

In the book we also reveal, for the first time, extreme risk intelligence that was received by police. One was a planned drive-by shooting into the front beer garden of a hotel at Cronulla the following weekend, which also included throwing a live hand-grenade into the crowd and speeding off. Another involved a gang of approximately 50 car loads of Middle Eastern youth pulling up at the front of Westfield at Miranda the Thursday night before Christmas and rampaging through the shopping centre. Both these attacks were thwarted by covert and massive overt police operations. For instance, a hand-grenade was taken off the black market in an undercover police sting that same week with two people arrested. Another potential source was closed down during a search warrant with the occupant arrested and guns seized. The areas in question were locked down and saturated by riot police. In addition, police had intelligence from numerous suppliers that baseball bats between Wollongong in the south and Newcastle in the north were being sold out. Also, hundreds of shopping trolley handles had been stolen, which are metal bars coated in plastic and would make an effective baton-type weapon.

The extent of the unrest, the intelligence police were receiving and the extreme risk the public faced the weekend following the riots required me as Police Commander to be in regular contact with the Police Minister, Carl Scully. To the absolute credit of the government of the day, there was a special recall of the NSW Parliament and emergency powers were granted to police. These included the ability to lock down entire suburbs; search people, phones and cars and where appropriate confiscate them; demand reasons and/or refuse entry for people attempting to enter a prescribed location, and arrest people and confiscate weapons wherever required. These were draconian measures that would never normally be required nor used, but the public were at extreme risk and this urgent legislation was absolutely needed by police at that time. And it worked!

The following weekend police locked down a large number of areas from Wollongong to Sydney, to Newcastle, with a focus on beach suburbs, based on intelligence received, utilising 2000 police. In addition to these areas being locked down, police had large mobile teams of pursuit drivers coupled with riot police in V8 cars confronting any mobile gangs and confiscating their cars and phones. A multitude of weapons were taken off the streets during these police operations including Molotov cocktails, bricks, petrol bombs, knives, guns, baseball bats, golf (and other) clubs and other weapons. These operations went on for weeks following the highly reported initial daytime event at Cronulla, with police continuing to receive intelligence and conduct large operations to thwart gang violence until order was once again restored. This part of the “Cronulla Riots” remains largely unreported and unknown.

Conclusion

In this book, for the first time, the events surrounding what became known as “The Cronulla Riots” is told by actual participants, including by the many people we interview that were involved at the time. Both Carl Scully and I find it quite bizarre that in all the journalistic writings, academic literature, social commentary and documentaries produced over the years since, not once have we been approached to contribute. We believe this book provides a far greater balanced and factual historical account of the events and we sincerely hope it becomes the “go-to” reference on the subject into the future.