Graham Matthews, Sydney

On July 18, NSW police minister Carl Scully, accompanied by assistant police commissioner Graeme Morgan, held a media conference to announce the final results of strike force Enoggera — the police task force charged with investigating the aftermath of December’s Cronulla riot and subsequent revenge attacks.

Scully reported that 51 people had been charged in relation to the anti-Arabic riot, while a further 54 revenge attackers had been charged. The relatively equal numbers of each side that have been arrested showed how “fair” the process had been, Scully argued.

Scott Poynting, associate professor in the School of Humanities at the University of Western Sydney, told Green Left Weekly that even a casual look at the facts shows this “fairness” to be little more than skin-deep.

“The fact that there’s 51 people charged with allegedly participating in the original racist violence, compared with 54 for participating in the brutal revenge attacks doesn’t indicate even-handedness”, he said, “because there were 5000 people involved in the original racist mob attack compared to a couple of hundred people involved in the car convoys engaging in revenge attacks. So the roughly equal numbers indicate no parity of treatment at all.

“The reason there’s been such disparity of treatment is the populist politics of xenophobia engaged in by [NSW Liberal Party leader Peter] Debnam and which in any case has been successfully practised by the state Labor government for at least the last three terms. This isn’t going to be abandoned in the run-up to another state election where they’re going to be determined to show that they can be just as tough as the other side.”

In response to the NSW Labor government’s announcement of the arrest numbers, Debnam told the July 19 Sydney Morning Herald that there were “200 Middle Eastern thugs” in Sydney whom he would round up if elected premier next March. So inflammatory were Debnam’s comments, that Morgan was forced to publicly respond, saying that there was no way this would happen, as police simply did not have evidence against a wider group of people than those already charged.

“Both leaders — Debnam and [NSW Premier Morris] Iemma — have talked in terms of thugs and grubs”, Poynting told GLW, “but certainly Debnam has been more pointed in doing that ... but he’s doing it out of perceived electoral advantage and populism and an attempt to attract the minority of disaffected racists.

“ If the police say there’s no evidence, that seems to be a pretty clear indication that there’s no basis to arrest them. Debnam’s assertion that he would order the police to arrest them is really just hairy-chested posturing. I don’t think he could do it in a democratic state, but the fact that he’s thinking about doing it is an indication of the dangerousness of his politics.”

Commenting on the bias against those involved in the revenge attacks in the police figures of arrests, Poynting added: “I’d be surprised if the disparity that’s been seen in the numbers of those arrested and charged hasn’t been reflected also in the other parts of the criminal justice system, such as trials and sentencing.”

From Green Left Weekly, July 26, 2006.
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