Monday, December 19, 2005
REPORTING LIVE FROM THE BLOODY SANDS
Not a lot right in this Guardian/Observer piece on Sydney’s beach troubles, beginning with the headline:
When the sands ran red
Sunday’s violence took place on streets near the beach, not actually on the beach itself; otherwise, the event may have taken on the festive air of a oversized and particularly anarchic volleyball game. Reporter Bernard O’Riordan blunderingly commences:
It is supposed to be the lucky country, where the beach culture more than any other phenomenon symbolises all that is breezy, open and inclusive about Australia. But the cocktail of fear, alienation and youthful anger spawned by the worst racial violence ever seen here now threatens the traditional Christmas of sun, sand and surf.
The worst ever? Nobody was killed. Or raped, for that matter.
Morris Iemma, the Labor leader of New South Wales, apologised for massive security measures across Sydney, its biggest police operation since the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
Actually, he apologised for the inconvenience to residents affected.
Elsewhere, young men smashed the windows of a car before the terrified occupants made a rapid escape. This was racist scapegoating at its worst: the two occupants were Bangladeshi exchange students living at Cronulla.
Lebanese gangs later attacked Asians. Mobs of idiots will behave idiotically.
The Liberal Prime Minister John Howard, re-elected last year on a hardline anti-immigration platform ...
Immigration was barely mentioned during the 2004 campaign. Besides which, Australia under Howard is not anti-immigration. The migration program for 2004/5 will admit up to 120,000 immigrants, plus 13,000 refugees.
By not condemning the racism, Howard and Labor leader Kim Beazley have both arguably failed to show moral leadership.
By allowing the clown O’Riordan to cover events in Australia, The Guardian has inarguably failed to show journalistic leadership.
In reality, Australia’s national disquiet started more than 200 years ago when Cook and his crew confronted Aborigines in Botany Bay.
If only the Aborigines had enforced a hardline anti-immigration policy.
But Sydney’s racial violence and the outback murder of the British backpacker Peter Falconio have only added to a growing awareness that all is not well in the lucky country.
The Falconio murder took place more than four years ago. His killer was subsequently caught, tried, and jailed. When will this terrible nation be healed?
(Via Paul C., who writes: “I hope no-one was swimming last Sunday – those bloody sands would have attracted thousands of Noahs …”)