Irony...a paranoid rant by a leftist professor complaining of the government using paranoia to get their way.

Fallacy...Deciding the scope of comparison to 20 years, when the terrorism of the last 6 years is the issue.

False dichotomy...claiming that because we have other causes of death, we cannot focus on terrorism

Begging the question...Assuming there are no terrorists in australia and so making asinine comments about tearing up newspapers keeping australia terrorist free.

Ad Hominem...Casting dispertions about the governments motives without evidence.

Yep...a real scholarly piece.

To Leigh, Terje, sneekeepete, borofkin, rossco, maracas, Chris Shaw & Ranier,

Two questions:
1) If you were PM of Australia in place of JH what alternative legislation would you seek to be implemented ?

2) Would your answer to 1) be different if one of those near and dear to you were among the Australians murdered by a terrorist ?

To Terje,
Irrelevant to the above. What happened to IP ?
Gadfly ( geoff33g@yahoo.com.au)

You're right Grey and Gadfly

Finally sense is breaking out in this string. Tomlinson must live a quiet life but writing of "spooks" must excite his imagination.

All the spooks I ever mixed with...were well balanced, intelligent and fairly ordinary. Its their political bosses who request reports supporting a pre-set policy (like the invasion of Iraq) that we need to worry about.

That said, I support tighter legislation.

New laws are necessary because the threat of bombing appears to have increased since the old laws went into force.

When the old laws were made shortly after 9/11 the obvious organisation and efficiency of suicide bombers walking into crowds (in London and Madrid) wasn't anticipated by our legal drafters (that is basically AGs drafting them on ASIO advice).

Also direct references to Australia (Melbourne) from an al-Quiada propaganda type suggest a threat is there. Al-Quiada has had a history of "making good" its threats.

Howard's denial that the increased threat is NOT connected to Australia being in Iraq fools nobody (or does it?). Howard just doesn't want to be politically blamed for making things more dangerous for Australians.

The proposed anti-bombing laws are a defacto admission that he has made it more dangerous.

What are we trying to defend though? I thought it was in George W's words "freedom". If so, why are we giving more of it up even before anything has happened on our soil?
Terrorists win, not by killing many people, but by making us so afraid we change and curtail our way of life.
Howard and the Premiers are covering their proverbial's with this legislation, so when and if a terrorist act occurs they can hold up their hands and say, we did everything we could.
The truly terrifying thing is, if and when such an attack does occur, what other freedoms will they take from us then?
By the way, Col Rouge, before you dismiss the left so scornfully, remember a pendulum is a pendulum and, eventually, as it has done throughout history, it will swing back the other way.

To Gadfly:

In answer to 2 - I recognise we are a very very temporary installation on this planet - I would mourn the loss of any of my loved ones; how they die is, at the end of the day, a sad irrelavancy. Gone is gone.

As for new legislation - we should have legislated not to supoprt Bush and Blair; but given that the brain dead have the whip hand at the moment we are stuck with an increased risk with it lies as its father; accordingly my personal alert system has leapt to code " its time for another beer" from " I think I'll stay in bed".

If we had an intelligence agency that operated with any integrity they should be resourced to do more of the same more often with the legislation they have got; the current raft of proposals represent no effective means of deterring any one or determining what the bad guys next move is; their is enough latitude in the covert capacity of ASIO etc to keep us safe - or as safe as we can be.

It is ridiculously easy to undertake an act of terror - the new measures are headline grabbers designed to generate an illusion of activity and a posture of strenfth - as they stand they will do little in reality - just make a few people feel better - they are placebo measures with severe side effects.

Laws that allow an outfit to arrest and detain someone who knows a guy who knows a guy who read the Koran who knows a guy that used fertilser on his farm and is a dab hand at repairing electric gizmo's is a joke - and thats what we are looking at.

I am sneekeepete and I remain incensed (gotta get out of this temple)