The author should dig a little deeper about Australia.

The Federal Departments of Finance and Treasury as well as Parliamentary Committees and Cabinet have regular oversight and inquire into Australia's security spending.

State bodies also assess State Police and other security spending.

Meanwhile we Australians spend vastly more on drinking, smoking, gambling and getting fat than providing for our own security.

Q: How can you tell the Americans at the international airport?
A: They're the ones stripping naked.

These days we are so beholden to the state for securing our freedom, unlimited obedience would not be too high a price, would it? How do you figure out how much security, and how much in price, is right?

The same problem affects any governmental provision. Once it is decided that the service is to be funded by tax, and there is to be a split between those paying for, and those receiving it, how do you know whether you're supplying too much, too little, or just the right amount? What rational principle (i.e. rational in terms of the evaluations of the consumers and the payers) can you use to decide? Answer: there is none.

Surely it's meaningless and confusing to talk of cost/benefit *in the abstract*, as if the difference between the person who pays, and the person who benefits, is of no account?

Any situation that involves a conflict of interest as between government and everyone else, as to whether to provide a particular service and how much to charge, we would expect the government to unilaterally provide too much of a service, at above market rates, thus benefitting themselves at the expense of everyone else. Not only that, but government will actively provoke conflicts so as to settle them in its own interest. And I think that's what we're seeing with the post-9/11 orgy of statism. And why exclude the Iraq and Afghanistan wars from the costs of these security measures btw?

Speaking of security, I read somewhere that the security for the headquarters of the Department of Homeland Security is provided by a private security firm.

Fear is just such a wonderful way of persuading taxpayers to hand over their money without complaining, you really can't blame governments for using it as much as they can. The trouble is that you can't keep up the same level of fear about the same things for very long (unless they actually DO something, of course, which seldom happens), so you constantly need new sources of fear. Luckily -- for the government, anyway -- scientists are happy to keep coming up with these as long as they get paid for it, and the media is happy to keep covering them, because bad news sells papers.

So we have a schizophrenic society -- vast numbers of people living in wealth and comfort being desperately afraid because the government and its accomplices are telling them to be.

Governments of all shapes are good at using the national security interests to promote their credentials of protecting borders ie. people.

Oversight of national security arrangements including spending, are in some part window dressing including some amazing claims in marketing those arrangements.

Changes to legislation that infringe on human rights to protect 'human rights' is one such way that civil liberties can be slowly whittled away. Small encroachments into established freedoms can grow to include suggestions that would normally be repugnant on first reading. It is called successive approximation or 'shaping' and is a tool of social engineering.

Homeland and Border Security Reviews are nearly always oversighted and chaired by former employees in those arenas. Hardly an impartial or partisan set up. This is not to argue that there is always a hidden agenda and that the Chairs are not acting honourably but oftentimes the reviews are only open to a small sector of the industry. And it is an industry.

Reviews and oversight can easily be corrupted as in the AWB case where the terms of reference very carefully avoided communications between senior public servants and government. Children Overboad is another example of the tools of obfuscation. Calls to widen the terms of reference for the Cole Inquiry were heeded in terms of BHP but failed to include other important players within the bureaucracy.

Stronger national security policies usually reflect failed foreign and economic policies and thus counter-terrorism becomes the bandaid approach.

Saul Eslake,

Laws should be the product of open debate and when parliaments fail to detect schemes in policies proposal, it is time for the constituents to say ‘Go’ to the ones they voted to govern.

One of the most horrendous of scheme ever devised is indeed the ‘Privacy Act 1988’.

Until this piece of legislation is taken out of the books, no Law will escape the doubt of being tainted by somebody’s scheme.

The real trust of this law, claimed to safeguard personal privacy, mired to deprive the elector of even the pretence of power.

Australians had survived as a Nation for two hundred years, without this deprivation of knowledge and, all of a sudden, found themselves facing a blank wall.

Paradoxically, by this Law, my name, address, phone number, date of birth, even the maiden name of my mother, is known to an unaccountable number of public servants, services’ provider’s employees and hell knows who else.

As I know none of these people, I cannot help feeling like a stranger in a town of strangers who know all about me and have powers over my life.

Indeed I become the visitor in Kafka’s Castle.

Who are these strangers? Am I sure that they are all normal? And what if one of them is not?

Mr. Eslake, I assure you that many people we encounter in the course of our day may not know of this inner fear, yet they, like me and, I suspect you, are within the field of its power.

Sir, we all know that the event of September 11, 2001, was not a spurious act of religious fanaticism and we can’t deny that the destruction of so many lives had no plausible cause in the iniquity of a class of super rich and their hegemonic trust and neither we can deny that the Bali bombings of the year after had something to do with the behavior of the over-cashed and over-drunk tourist who knows and cares only about pleasure.

If you want to know the truth about 911,see http://ae911truth.org/
Perhaps Saul and others to give answers to these anomolies for the Towers and WTC 7.
1/Nearly freefall acceleration through path of greatest resistance

2/Improbable symmetry of debris destruction

3/Extremely rapid onset of destruction

4/Over 100 first reponders reported explosions and flashes.

5/Multi-tonne steel girders ejected laterally for 200m @ 80kph

6/Mid -air pulverisation of 90,000 tonnes of concrete and metal decking.

7/Massive volume of expanding pyroclastic like clouds as we see in volcanoes.

8/400m foot dia. of debris field no" pancaked floors found as with gravitional collapses see in Christchurch earthquake.

9/Isolated explosive ejections 20-40 stories below demolition front.

10/Total building destruction;dismemberment of steel frame.

11/Several tonnes of molten iron found under all 3 high rises.

12/Evidence of thermite inceniaries found in the steel and dust samples.

13/FEMA steel analysis; sulfidation,oxidation & inter-granular melting.FEMA denies the existance if molten steel when evidence to the contrary clearly exists.

14/No president for steel-framed high-rise to collapse due to fires.

15/Human bone fragments found atop buildings 200m away.

16/Enormous put options on United Airways weeks before the event.

17/Why was NORAD stood down?

18/Many members of the 911 Commission say that the report was seriously flawed.http://patriotsquestion911.com/

The anomolies go on and on but the media ignores the reality.