Letter from Australia: Silver lining in cloud of Cronulla - KC Boey, New Straits Times Malaysia

This sounds like good news for the future - let's wait and see what the The Reporting Diversity project report says later this year! Sue Ellson, Founder, Newcomers Network http://www.newcomersnetwork.com

http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/nst/Sunday/Columns/20060903091233/Article/index_html

Letter from Australia: Silver lining in cloud of Cronulla
03 Sep 2006
K.C. Boey

IF it were the case that behind every cloud is a silver lining, participants at the community forum in Melbourne would have left gratified for the lessons of Cronulla.

The more circumspect might conclude that the riotous behaviour on the surf beach south of Sydney last December was no aberration.

For all the protestations at the time of Prime Minister John Howard and New South Wales premier Morris Iemma to the contrary, Cronulla is symptomatic of a deeper malaise, the circumspect would argue.

It would be worrying enough if Cronulla were indicative of alcohol-fuelled and drug-induced misbehaviour taken to extremes. Or mere competition for leisure use of public space.

It would be devastating that after more than a century, the ghosts of racism of a white Australia had been resurrected in clashes between mobs of white and Middle Eastern youth.

It would be an indictment of the liberal democratic tradition — which Australians lay claim to championing — that sections of the media, a cornerstone of the institution, should stand accused of being party to inciting the impressionable to violence.

Which of the conditions comes closest to the truth? And what can Australians learn from the experience?

It is a massive undertaking for a one-day seminar of local government, community and non-government participants to come to a conclusion.
The organisers were realistic. A panacea for the social ills of community was far from the agenda.

The aim was to explore the events of Cronulla and see what local government could do to prevent such events from happening in the first place, Dalal Smiley, Darebin co-ordinator of multicultural affairs, tells the New Sunday Times.

China-born mayor Stanley Chiang posed the questions: Was Cronulla a law and order issue; was racism a main or a contributing factor; was it a one-off incident; could it happen elsewhere in Australia; why did it happen; what lessons should be learnt; to what extent was it a local issue?

The seminar title captured the issues and the objective: "Place, Power and Privilege: The Challenge for Local Government".

The seminar brought together academic theorists, the police, and the person caught in the crossfire of Cronulla — councillor Kevin Schreiber and mayor of Sutherland Shire, the semi-rural suburb Cronulla is in.

Anthropologist Ghassan Hage provided the theoretical backdrop against which participants grappled with the emotions of conflict, strategies for resolution, and the role of State Government, local government, and non-governmental organisations.

"The seminar provided an in-depth examination of the dynamics that led to Cronulla, and the relationships between the various players which contributed to it," says Smiley.

"It was terrific," says Christina Del Frate, multicultural liaison officer of a city suburb in Melbourne. "We definitely can learn from what happened (in Cronulla) and formulate strategies to prevent it from happening."

Off the Gladstone coast, 600km north of Brisbane, is the Great Barrier Reef. Like Del Frate’s City of Port Phillip, Gladstone would not be considered vulnerable to the racism that some quarters suggest underpinned the Cronulla violence.

Of the 25,000 people in Gladstone, only 10 per cent were born overseas. That’s below the national average of one in four Australians born overseas.

But Gladstone is one of those areas facing a severe shortage of skilled labour and is looking overseas for its workers. As a result, the council is arming itself for a change in its demographics.


For Associate Professor Lynette Sheridan Burns, sections of the media have much to answer for. "If they didn’t start the fire, they certainly poured accelerant on it," said the head of the School of Communication Arts in the University of Western Sydney.

Seminar participants might be encouraged that Canberra might be doing something about the deficiencies of the media in an increasingly plural Australia. Burns is on a national taskforce looking into the training of journalists in a now diverse Australia.

The Reporting Diversity project, funded by the Federal Government’s Living in Harmony programme, was started before Cronulla. Its report is still in draft form, but the recommendations promise to be enlightening.

The subject did not come up in Darebin and participants at the seminar were not to know.

So how should local government and community deal with complex issues at a local level?

Plenary speakers, workshop presenters and participants had some idea. For many, as the Chinese novelist — or comic book — will say, wait for the next chapter.