It's 11pm Tuesday night and all seems quiet in southern Sydney so far this evening. NSW parliament is going to be recalled on Thursday to pass legislation to give police greater emergency powers. Tonight they have roadblocked the Cronulla area, and apparently only residents are being let in. I have vivid memories of the Newcastle CBD being similarly sealed off in the opening days of 1990 following the earthquake, but when (if ever) was the last time a locality of this magnitude in this country was shut down by police for reasons other than natural disaster or Olympiad?

Nonetheless, there have been some other disturbing developments today, with racist SMS messages being received on the Gold Coast, a racist attack on a family in Perth and an assault on a Lebanese-born taxidriver in Adelaide. And there's still the very real prospect of more trouble on Sydney's beaches next Sunday.

With ABC Radio's current affairs programs sidelined today because of an industrial dispute, the only playlist I have for today's news if the ABC TV news coverage - five clips (WMV broadband) totalling about nine minutes in duration. Click here for the playlist.

From here on I won't be stigmatising Cronulla with its name in the title of each post, and I've created a separate category for "Sydney Riots".