Our disconcerting certainty in battling terrorism
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We ought to wonder how a Government that weeks ago seemed incapable of attracting and holding our trust is now cast as the solid paternal guardian against nameless dread, writes Jonathan Green.
The following is an extract from Jonathan Green’s article:
“In our Senate this morning debate resumes on legislation that seeks to reset those scales in the firm concrete of law, law that may see journalists imprisoned for reporting state secrets in the public interest, may see your devices tracked, your data horded. The debate will be coloured by events, will be driven by the tensions of a moment and the frustrations of a state security apparatus that confronts that most elusive of threats: the acts of maddened individuals.
As Senator Brandis told his colleagues yesterday: “Freedom is not a given. Freedom must be secured particularly at a time when those who seek to destroy those freedoms are active, are blatant and are among us.”
As the joke goes: if they hate us for our freedoms, perhaps removing that freedom will make us safer.
Our politicians will continue to speak with tremendous certainty and assurance, but the rest of us ought to wonder.
We ought to wonder how a Government that weeks ago seemed incapable of attracting and holding our trust is now cast as the solid paternal guardian against nameless dread, how our fears have ennobled it.
We ought to wonder how an Opposition can be so desperate to share those spoils of our anxiety that while it talks down every Coalition gesture in economics, education, health and all the rest, it can find only unbounded praise for everything the Government does in national security. Somehow it manages to get that so defiantly right.
We ought to wonder, with whatever calm we can muster, just how much we are prepared to give to secure ourselves against the unknown.
And perhaps we ought not be so certain.”
Jonathan Green hosts Sunday Extra on Radio National and is the former editor of The Drum. View his full profile here.
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