ABSTRACT
The Anholt City Brands Index rated Sydney, in December 2005, as the third strongest city “brand” in the world (Anholt 2005).1 Let me begin, then, with some images of Sydney from that same time. Here is a description from reporter Tony Eastley on the national morning news show AM on Monday December 12th:
The racial events that erupted at Cronulla in Sydney’s south at the weekend continued overnight, with police cars attacked in one suburb and dozens of private vehicles smashed in another. At Woolaware, near Cronulla, a man was stabbed by a gang of youths. He’s in hospital in a serious condition. What have been simmering, but relatively minor racial problems at one of Sydney’s beaches blew out of control yesterday at Cronulla. Large numbers of mainly young people had gathered to, in their words, reclaim Cronulla beach from gangs of youths, mainly of Lebanese decent. There were dozens of arrests as police tried to maintain control of an increasingly drunken mob. Anyone of Middle Eastern appearance became a potential target. Several people were set upon and bashed. (Eastley 2005)
The events at Cronulla, which spilled over into surrounding suburbs, shocked people across the country, leading to a heated debate about racism in Australian society, including the part played by talkback radio in the lead-up to the riots, the infl uence of the gang culture of Sydney’s southern beaches, and the possible role of Prime Minister John Howard in encouraging an atmosphere of division and intolerance. For many people, the events were a fl ashback to the xenophobic politics of the 1990s associated with the short-lived One Nation Party led by Pauline Hanson, but in the contemporary climate they also resonated with anxiety over Islamic fundamentalism and the threat of terrorism.
