" Despite immigration and related issues spilling into the political debate on occasions, Australia has remained a tolerant and accepting society, compared with other nations. The recent events in Sydney are contemptible but, so far at least, they remain peculiar to Sydney. They turn on the criminality of a minority of young Australians of Muslim Lebanese background and the criminality of Australians of predominantly Anglo-Celtic background who attacked those whom they refer to as "Lebs" at Cronulla last Sunday week. The problems among the Lebanese were identified by Nadia Jamal in the Herald last Tuesday when she said that "some men of Australian Lebanese Muslim background seem to be so aggressive and violent … This has everything to do with culture and patriarchal attitude, and nothing to do with religion."
"It is unwise to draw Australia-wide conclusions from the social disorder in parts of Sydney. What is at issue here is criminality - not the existence of widescale racism or the failure of multiculturalism."
[Racism? Not in my multicultural neighbourhood.]
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