Claire Harvey: A nation sullied by cowardly rioters

Nothing provides a bit of insight into patriotism like standing back about 2000km from your homeland and watching its disgrace.

Of all the disgusting events which are occurring in Australia at the moment, the worst sight for an expat like me has not been the screamed racist slogans, or the gang of thousands who chased a teenage boy through the streets with murderous intent, or the reports of carol singers being spat upon, or the young Muslim woman who was thrown to the ground and kicked.

Even more distressing than all of this is to watch my compatriots prepare for a bit of Muslim-bashing by draping themselves in the Australian flag, singing Waltzing Matilda and chanting "Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!"

To most Australian eyes, that kind of barracking has always been intrinsically harmless; slightly irritating when it's conducted by the six-pack of beery yobbos sitting one row in front at the cricket, maybe, but not otherwise too offensive.

But the white rioters of Cronulla have assaulted every one of their fellow Australians by hijacking and misusing symbols which are supposed to represent something higher than lynch-mob cowardice.

To see that image on television in Australia would be bad enough, but to see it on television in a foreign land is like looking into a mirror and struggling to recognise the foul reflection, because it is accompanied by the knowledge that forever more, foreigners will be a little bit justified when they say, however unfairly, that all Australians are racist.

One of the sort-of compliments New Zealanders often pay Australia is to praise the innate self-belief and ruthless drive of the country's sportspeople.

"You Aussies just have that take-no-prisoners attitude that we don't have," a Kiwi spectator at a rugby league match once remarked as we watched the Warriors lie down for a little nap while the Sydney Bulldogs played football.

It was hard to argue at the time, but that sort of accolade has always felt uncomfortable, and not just because the Sydney Bulldogs were mired in gang-rape allegations at the time.

It's uncomfortable because patriotism is a dangerous game, and ascribing good or bad characteristics to any national or cultural group is always risky, even if it might feel good when things are going well.

It's horrible to hear the kind of remarks some New Zealanders have made over the past week; the suggestion that all white Australians hate and fear foreigners (many do, but they are the same bitter fools who fester in all societies), or that most Australians are comfortable calling black people "Abos" (actually, that's a term so taboo it would stop the conversation in any group of thinking Australians).

The criticism of Australia hurts not just because it all contains a painful element of truth, but because it would be nice to think that New Zealanders might learn from Australia's pain, and see that this kind of generalisation is exactly the problem infecting Cronulla.

There's nothing new about beach tribalism in Sydney. The surfies have been fighting the westies on Cronulla Beach for decades, but the difference today is that both sides are able to recruit idiots from all over the nation with text-messages and with the support of radio talkback hate-mongers like Sydney 2UE's Alan Jones, a close adviser to John Howard and a former Wallaby coach who repeatedly incited the rioters.

Now, too, the Anglo yobbos feel bolstered by well-publicised examples of misbehaviour by nasty little thugs who happen to be Muslim, like the Pakistani gang-rapist who told the NSW Supreme Court on December 9 that he thought it was all right to rape a white girl because she wasn't dressed modestly like a Muslim woman.

The visceral anger that racism inspires in the fair and decent majority of Australians is another reason it is galling to hear Howard - the man who has done so much to foster intolerance and fear of foreigners - using a phrase like "un-Australian" to describe the rioters. Un-Australian must be the least helpful term ever coined; it can apparently be used to describe anything from vegetarianism to car-jacking.

Isn't the root of Cronulla's problem the notion of things being either Australian or un-Australian? Can't we get beyond that kind of simplistic dualism in solving problems which are clearly more complex?

New Zealanders should be thankful that the name of their country doesn't lend itself very well to use as a negative descriptor; every option sounds ridiculous (non-Kiwi? un-New Zealandish?).

Because while the invocation of patriotic language can make us feel good about the best of our societies, it can also be used to justify our worst inclinations.

Don Brash tried it the other day, describing the dorks who put up racist posters in Wellington as "un-Kiwi". It's not going to catch on, thank goodness, because hopefully this country can do better.