The images, beamed around the globe in the past few days, of hordes of drunken young European-Australians in Sydney attacking their Arab-Australian fellow citizens have again exposed the racist underbelly of this island continent of 20 million people.
The attacks began on Sunday when a crowd of about 5,000 descended on Sydney's southern beaches and surrounding suburbs, assaulting men and women of Middle Eastern appearance. Many of these young men and women were retaliating for assaults on lifeguards, which they say were carried out by people of Lebanese background.
Prime Minister John Howard has sought to play down the significance of these events: 'Violence, thuggery, loutish behaviour, smashing people's property, intimidating people - all of those things are breaches of the law,' he said. 'I don't think the actions should be given some kind of special status because they occur against the background of this or that.'
Australians can be intolerant and xenophobic, although one in four of them was born overseas. As Peter Maher, a media analyst, said in 2001, there is a prevailing attitude among many Australians of 'the more Muslims we have in this country the more problems we're going to get'.
The history of this former British colony is littered with examples of racial prejudice and the politics of fear. In the 1860s, Chinese miners were killed in riots and, until 1966, Australian governments adopted a White Australia Policy, which prevented non-European migrants from entering the country.
One of the most shameful political traditions in Australia is for political leaders to play on xenophobic fears about 'hordes' of people descending on Australia's uninhabited northern borders.
The bloodshed and violence this week has to be seen in this context of a them-versus-us mentality, which plays on the cultural differences involved. The current hostility towards Islamic and Arab-Australians is being fuelled in part by the media and the major political parties - Mr Howard's conservative coalition government and the Labor Party (ALP), which holds power in every Australian state.