In beachside Cronulla, a weatherworn sticker bearing the insignia of the far-right extremist National Socialist Network clings to a street pole – edges curled, colours faded. It’s been there for weeks. Unremoved. Uncontested.

In Redfern, Newtown or Enmore, it would be unlikely to last a day. There, such stickers are quickly painted over, scratched off or overwritten with counter-expression. The contrast is telling. It is not just an absence of resistance in Cronulla, but a quiet tolerance for what is allowed to remain.

Two decades after the Cronulla riots, there are no official memorials or public commemorations, yet the legacy of that violence lingers in the absences, silences and visual politics that shape our public spaces.

A scene from the Cronulla riots on December 11, 2005, and recent street stickers from Newtown, left, and Cronulla.Credit: Photo montage: Stephen Kiprillis. Photos: Andrew Meares, supplied

On December 11, 2005, the suburb became a flashpoint of racial violence, a week after an alleged assault on two volunteer surf lifesavers by men from Middle Eastern backgrounds escalated into an eruption of xenophobic hate, fuelled by mass texts such as: “This Sunday every f---ing Aussie in the Shire, get down to North Cronulla to help support Leb and wog bashing day ... Bring your mates down and let’s show them this is our beach and they’re never welcome back.”

Earlier this year, playwright Sarah Doyle, a recent Cronulla local, tried to prompt reflection on the 20th anniversary through community theatre and public art. Nearly 500 posters asking, “It’s been 20 years – Time to Talk?” went up twice over several weeks but were interfered with almost immediately. Some were torn down; others were left partially intact, with the QR code or central message ripped away. “I was told that the surf community doesn’t want to talk about it,” she said.

Many locals welcomed Doyle’s efforts – and would abhor the incursions of racists – but recent poster activity in Cronulla follows the same pattern. Several “March for Australia” posters on street poles near the high street have been torn,........

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