Performing Australian nationalisms at Cronulla

Abstract

On the Friday before the Cronulla riots, Sydney's daily tabloid newspaper the Daily Telegraph (2005: 1) carried the banner headline: 'Not on our Beach: Cronulla police vow to defend Australian way'. The article was principally a report on how police would not tolerate violence on the beach, but the reference to the Australian way of life gave a clear sense that certain ideas about nationalism were at stake. The rioters claimed possession of key icons of Australian nationalism: the barbecue, the boxing kangaroo, utes, the colours green and gold, beer, national songs and sporting chants. These performances of nationalism, and the reactions to them, provide an insight into contemporary Australian nationalism and its future directions. In this chapter, I undertake a performative analysis of the everyday nationalisms in evidence at the riots and also apply this analytical frame to the 'revenge attacks' and the anti-racism initiatives that followed. The empirics for this chapter are the eyewitness reports as recounted in newspapers in the weeks after December 11, 2005. My aims are to demonstrate the utility of performative theory for analysing competing nationalisms, and to identify the progressive political resources within the riot and its aftermath. A handful of scholars have reflected on how, rather than indicating a failure of multiculturalism, the Cronulla riot has asserted its importance, and argued for its enhancement (Babacan, 2006)