Revenge attacks against White Australians carried out by Lebanese thugs were 100 times worse than the original Cronulla riot, and cops thwarted planned drive-by shooting and grenade attacks, the then-police commander says.
Assistant Commissioner Mark Goodwin spoke out on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the December 11, 2005, events at Cronulla, and told A Current Affair that in the decades since the violent retaliation carried out by Middle Eastern men has been minimised by the media, academia and the official narrative.
Goodwin, who last year released a book with then-Police Minister Carl Scully about the riots, also revealed that the revenge attacks, that involved dozens of carloads of armed young men rampaging through Sydney’s beachside suburbs stabbing and bashing locals, went on for weeks. A church in Auburn was burned down, and another nearby had its windows smashed.
“The violence that was exhibited and that the police dealt with was probably, I’d say, at least ten times, possibly up to a hundred times, worse than anything that occurred on the day at Cronulla,” he said.
“These were short, sharp, intense visits to suburbs and just trashing entire suburbs, smashing windows, stabbing people, and batting, baseball batting people, and then they’re out again.”
Goodwin said police seized “truckloads of weapons”, including crates of molotov cocktails, from the marauding Lebanese gangs, and were forced to deploy special units throughout the whole summer to keep the peace.
“We had very strong information and intelligence that there was going to be a drive-by shooting and a hand grenade thrown into the beer garden the following weekend at Northies, which is the popular hotel at North Cronulla,” Goodwin said.
In his book he also detailed a plan stopped by police for 50 cars full of Middle Eastern men to rampage through Miranda’s Westfield shopping centre with bats, knives and guns and smash up shops to “rip the Christ out of Christmas”.
Goodwin denied that racism was the primary cause of the violence, saying tensions had always existed between Cronulla locals and gangs coming to the beach on the train from the city’s southwest, but stressed that the 2005 riots were started by Lebanese gangsters making “very very offensive comments to young women”.
“However, this time, it became, instead of f-off bankies or westies or sharpies or rockers or whatever it is, it was f-off Lebs. And instantly that became labelled and badged as racist,” he said.
“Like any riots around the world, there’s always a flash point, and that flash point was an assault on the lifeguards by some of these young Lebanese men from the western suburbs.”
He also criticised the media for ignoring the real cause of the violence and the disproportionate response from the Middle Eastern thugs afterwards.
“We’ve had even academics write it up, and it’s all in the school curriculum, and it’s everywhere, and it’s all the white, racist bogans of the Cronulla area,” Goodwin said.
“There’s nothing to do with the revenge attacks. There’s nothing to do with the build-up to it, which is really the whole circumstances of the big picture.”
By July 2006 almost 300 charges had been laid, against 51 people from the original Cronulla riot and 53 from the revenge attacks.
Header image: Left, Middle Eastern thugs bash a man in the street. Right, a man who was stabbed by revenge attackers.
