"My respect for tolerance will p!ss all over yours!" - Keisha, Bromwell High

This is why Waltzing Matilda should NEVER be the national anthem. People using it as an excuse to attack others and stake some kind of nationalistic patriotism-gone-nuts claim to "ownership" of Australia is just the sort of thing that forgets that our true national anthem talks about advancing Australia, not sending it back into some kind of racist dark ages, and welcoming all people from around the world.

Will the people who rioted be branded as "terrorists?" Maybe they should...

I find it ironic that the people who were rioting and stuff in Sydney were telling Lebanese and Middle Eastern people to "go back home" because they "don't belong here." Maybe they should consider that NONE of us actually "belong" here or can claim the land as our own. I mean, the Aboriginals were the true inhabitants of this country until Anglo-Saxons came along and pinched it, so realistically we're all people who "don't belong."

It's a shame to our country that there are idiots out there who act in this way. And other idiots who excuse it. And even more idiots who try their hardest to inflame the situation (such as members from the Australia First Party) by saying that too many "undesirable" people are allowed to move to this country (strangely, they don't include themselves on that list of "undesirables").

Personally, I'm glad to be out of the Sydney area. People up there aren't generally as tolerant or as open-minded and accepting as people in Melbourne and Adelaide are. There's also a greater feel of the potential for violence there that you just don't get in many of the other capital cities in Australia. It's not an issue of needing more police, as the NSW Opposition leader claims, but a total adjustment of attitude.

And we need to do something about the way that politicians and the media seems to promote intolerance of the Muslim community by the way that people are stereotyped and things are worked into some kind of racial statement if anything goes wrong or a couple of people do something moronic.

Especially since 9/11.