I would have to say(to steal Keith Windschuttle's phrase)these were not 'race riots' but 'multicultural riots'. I'd like to know if anyone has been arrested for the bashing of the lifeguards, which prompted the rally in the first place.

The rally was a protest against the inaction of police towards thuggery from the Leb-Aussies, while the police miraculously appear for minor offences from anglo-aussies.

Interesting how this is all lost on the media, determined to beat up the situation as pure racism (strictly from the anglo-aussie side).

After reading this article and checking the authors background I had my thoughts confirmed - an academic. Our family is University educated so I am not knocking academia.

Please Mr Pell get out, mix - in all stratas of Sydney society and all ages and you shall discover that this problem has been brewing and bubbling for 30 years across Sydney. Your article shows much ignorance of the realities of this recent symptom of the underlying problems of various Government induced "Multiculturalism" at Cronulla Beach.

Yeah look Davo, it really is amazing.. I'm stunned by emphasis on racism going around everywhere.. as I pointed out in another post, Sydney is an absolutely top notch place for immigrants from all different countries.. there is relatively very little racial violence in Sydney.. most of the violence by far in Sydney is related to gangs and drugs, and NOBODY bothers to protest about those..

My first brief analysis of the current popular response to the Cronulla riot (note RIOT, singular not RIOTS, plural - why is everyone, including news sources, saying riots all the time? purely for the sake of dramatisation. There was only ONE riot at Cronulla. And it formed out of a larger PEACEFUL protest), is something along these lines: Racism, or to be a racist, is broadly considered to be one of the worst possible things you could be. To therefore proclaim that you are 'against racism' or to say 'I am not a racist', I believe in the current context has become an ultimate statement of self-righteousness. To run around proclaiming 'Racism is bad' or 'Prejudice is bad' is basically a tautology, and does absolutely nothing to stop gang violence and organised crime.

I also hold the media responsible and culpable not only for inciting violence in the first place (Alan Jones, etc.), but particularly for fanning the flames afterwords, by wrongfully labelling the current problem as a 'race war' or 'race riots', by spreading misinformation about the incident at Cronulla itself, and by failing to accurately examine the causes of the incident. The news sources that have done this are guilty of inciting violence and civil unrest. They have breached the code of journalism to which they are bound. And lots of people such as Peter here, who surprisingly works as an academic, simply perpetuate it, shamelessly denigrating the amazingly tolerant society that we live in.

It was not the Howard Government that trashed of the concept of multiculturalism, it was people like Kell, that promoted different standards for different people. As we see in so many other Politically Correct academics, here we have the racism and bigotry of low expectations.

If there was any "green light" for racism, it was from the PC left that has refused to see the obvious, and has done everything possible to make race a matter of politics and identity. As to the "admirable" restraint shown by Australians of Islamic background, the rest of us must have missed it. He should have probably talked to the families of the girls that were raped by the "Australians of Islamic background." Maybe they were being restrained as they raped those poor girls, but then again, maybe they (the girls) provoked those poor lebanese kids by their taste in fashion and make them (the boys) rape them (the girls).

Yes, "Australia led the world for a period in shaping a nation that promoted tolerance, reciprocity and the sense that you could come from anywhere be any colour, believe in any God, speak any language, do anything within the law and be an Aussie." Past tense. That was before the doctrine of Multiculturalism, that divides by race and ethicity, believes in any God, even one that tells the faithful to kill unbelievers, speak no language, respects no laws and tells people they need not be Aussies.

"Australians will need the help of its Asian neighbours" What? Who? Indonesia behead those girls? Or maybe China shoot them in the streets? Maybe Singapore no chewing gum or else? For sure Australia has problems but it doesn't need the help of other nations in Asia, which - contrary to what Mr Kell thinks - are far more racist and intolerant that Australia.

Maybe Mr. Kell hasn't noticed it, but there isn't much of a line of immigrants wanting to get into the other Asia countries (which ever they are) that he considers so tolerant and secure.

Kactuzkid

Here’s another example of left-wing, self-loathing twaddle which places the blame, again, on Anglo/Western European Australians, and chunters on about “racism”, ignoring the fact that we have had different races here since the First Fleet. Cronulla is the result of multiculturalism – the deliberate promotion of cultural differences – which has turned Australia into a land of tribes, isolated from each other.

Cronulla is to do with culture and twisted lefty government instigated policy, not with race. Howard, according to Kell, “stubbornly rejects the notion that there is underlying racism in Australian society, preferring to take a more positive view of Australians, but this ignores the bigoted, intolerant and selfish attitudes that the Howard years have spawned.” Kell himself stubbornly sticks to the same tired old lies, which form the basis of everything the left utters.

There is nothing new about the Australian left’s hatred of self and hatred of Australia. We will have to suffer the already trite “dog whistle politics” catch-cry well into the next generation as Kell et al twist the minds of young people in schools and universities.

There is nothing “ambivalent” about welcoming migrants and detaining illegal immigrants, either. And Asian students from overseas find it easy to remain in Australia under the Howard government, when they could go back to help their own third world countries after study.

And he is still harping on a mistake my DIMIA in which two women clearly contributed to the confusion which landed them in their own predicaments.

Arabs and Muslims have “marginalised” themselves from the rest of us. They have been browbeaten by their religion into believing they have to. Asian migrants integrate and intermarry as do others, and aborigines were marginalised by the theories of that doyen of the left, ‘Nugget’ Coombes.

Our real detractors and enemies are the Australian left, not foreign countries. Half a dozen international papers made anything of Cronulla, an insignificant event to most countries, and half of the articles were written by expat Australians. ASEAN has its own problems, and some commented as an aside to the PM. How awful!

Hmmm...

Peter Kell's arguments can be categorised as the same old same old; but then again, so can the comments that have already been made on this article.

Can we, instead, ask why it is that areas such as South Cronulla, as well as Lakemba, Punchbowl and Bankstown, for example, been allowed to become no-go zones for police over the past ten years or so? Whatever happened to the standard of policing I remember from the days of my youth? It wasn't so much the "golden age", nor was it the "boot up the bum" theory of policing; it was the fact that any anti-social behaviour was addressed quickly and not allowed to escalate.

Despite the rhetoric, policing today seems more about statistics, sociology and psychology than about maintaining law and order.