Terrorists are people that lie through their back teeth/deceive every which way to accomplish their evil!

Could be stopped dead in their tracks if we but guarded all public places with covertly deployed UNBEATABLE space age lie detectors, that'd allow microsecond facial movements to register with electronic surveillance, have a red flag fall!

As would also occur in thermal imaging if one intends to deceive, which results in a specific area of the brain lighting up not seen normally in the brains of ordinary folk going about their normal lives.

These electronic surveillance devices ought to be deployed at every entry point/in all public places, particularly banks/financial institutions.

And given we did this? Strike terror into the heart of virtually every politician as they would have to know this would inducibly expose them for who and what they are! Not benign folk just there to make a difference! As they to a generic man will claim!?

They almost more than anyone else, the real terrorists and living in plain sight among us! Gradually, progressively removing our rights/privileges!?

They'll thunder and roar about border protection and how we cannot lift a COWARDLY finger to bring innocent children out of harm's way!

We could if we had just one honest Leader with balls! Send a couple of dozen buses across a border and relocate OUR PEOPLE! Then subject the adults to the described UNBEATABLE, SPACE AGE, COVERTLY DEPLOYED LIE DETECTION!

Time for all normal human beings in the room to step forward/get this done!

Even if that then exposes the real terrorists in our midst, who to a generic man will thunder and roar about border protection/all sorts of distractions so they can get on progressively removing our rights and the inviolate freedom of the press!?

I know you know who these real terrorists hiding in plain sight among us are!?

So, no names no pack drill!

And who through daily decisions by the dozen threaten all of us with an extinction event few will survive!

Now, that's real terrorism and writ large! TBC
Alan B.

Its easy to selectively quote statistics. The author would have more credibility if he compared the:

A. comparitively high amounts of government money spent on deaths caused by preventable heart disease (by over-eating), smoking, alcoholism and road deaths (speeding, drunk driving), with the

B. comparitively low amount spent on counter-terrorism.

The goverment must spend money for All Risks (A. and B. and others).

If counter-terrorism authorities were unable (due to lack of funding) to stop Islamic "mass casualty" terrorists exploding a bomb on an airliner killing many what would the author say?

This almost happened in 2017, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Australian_aeroplane_bomb_plot

"Four suspects were arrested without charge by Australian Federal Police on 29 July 2017 in Sydney on suspicion of an Islamic inspired plot to plant a bomb on an Etihad Airways flight [with 400 passengers aboard] departing Sydney on 15 July 2017."

"Two Lebanese-Australian brothers, Khaled Khayat and Mahmoud Khayat were charged with "preparing for, or planning, a terrorist attack". The plan was to detonate an improvised explosive device concealed in a suitcase twenty minutes into an Abu-Dhabi-bound flight with 400 passengers aboard.

The plot was prevented at the airport check-in counter when a passenger attempted to check in a bag that was suspiciously heavy. The IEDs were shipped international cargo from ISIS members to the plotters in Australia. The two brothers charged in the case are said to have a brother, Tarek, who is a senior member of the Islamic State in Raqqa. The IEDs inside the luggage were concealed inside a meat grinder and a Barbie doll."

Good to see this being articled. I have asked my partner who is a deputy captain in the NSW RFS to leave. Her value to me is immense, her value to other Australia is apparently less then the guy on the side if the road with the Stop/Go sign. Shes been out dozens of times here in Northern NSW and fire season has barley started, with climate change, this will get much worse.

She is undertrained (have to fit in work and life) so the once a month roll the hose out session don't cut it. Understaffed, staffed by mostly aged pensioners because (she isn't but she does work and of her crew, only two aren't) who else can get away from work at 10AM on a Tuesday ? and the ignominy of a RURAL service run out of Sydney is a giant slap in the face.

That the RFS Is not paid is beyond ridiculous. Just this year, shes directly saved 4 houses and the lives of two people and several sheds and outbuildings...as a volunteer, had two fire over runs occur to put her in imminent danger from the catastrophic fires shes attended. Attended road aide accidents to help the paid police via fire suppression, taken days off work to recover form exhaustion and smoke inhalation, attend downed power lines during high winds in to contain fires etc etc. apparently she has so little value to society, she gets fed out of date snack packs on the fire line as her reward and abused by people because she wasn't there in time to save other houses. The handful of aged pensioners left in her brigade will have to service the wider community.

I have been a member of an emergency management committee for over
25 years and never once has discussion of terrorism been featured on
the agenda of a meeting or unofficially. The writers comment;

Australia's national emergency management priorities are dominated and
distorted by fear-based perceptions of terrorism. A terrorism
connotation distorts all that it touches, removing any sense of
proportion or objective;

just seems to be outside of reality.

Terrorists can do as much or more harm as arsonists setting fires! Particularly in tinder-dry conditions with a strong wind blowing! We need to access satellite vision and record it automatically so we can go back and see just how some of these fires started and who or what started them! And given we can then trace the firebugs back to their lairs.

Charge them with attempted murder or homicide in the second degree?

Punishment should include being forced to watch as all they own in the world, becomes part of a controlled burn!

After which they ought to be exiled! To anywhere else on earth! Offered travel to anywhere in the middle east, where summer temps regularly exceed 50C! then see their citizenship cancelled, so they cannot return, just go somewhere else!

Not fit to live among decent law-abiding Aussies. Should be them rather than thoroughbred horsed being dogged for pet food!? And given we wouldn't do it to a dog?

Establish the irrefutable facts with the aid of unbeatable, space-age lie detection! And video records of this lie detector inquiry! The only breaks these criminals should get ought to depend on full disclosure and be willing to cop high-security prison for no less than twenty years!
Alan B.

Terrorists can do as much or more harm as arsonists setting fires!
ASlan B,
An education system focused on leftist indoctrination is even worse !

Someone clearly thinks anyone to the middle of extreme-right views is a leftie and worse than an arsonist setting fires that can and have killed people sometimes firies! Is living on another planet!

Many VOLUNTEER Firefighters would and do hold left-leaning political views.

Being a person, SMALL L LIBERAL, and former emergency response worker, who is not an indoctrinated animal of either the left or the right! I find such comment objectionable in the extreme and only able to be voiced by a nazi!

A Nazi completely bereft of normal human empathy!

From where I sit there is nothing more heinous than an arsonist! Nothing!

Particularly where their completely insane activities take the lives of firefighters and members of emergency response!

Arsonists are much more evil in every which way than paedophiles! And shouldn't receive the latitude they do today in our courts!

Even a bullet between the eyes is too good for these, evil personified animals! But should be what they receive if they cannot be permanently exiled!
Alan B.

On the topic of our government's emergency response readiness/activities? Their response to an emergency that takes more than double the annual road toll is to simply ignore it!?

Given responding to it in any meaningful way would involve removing or amending a government-created and imposed regulation!

Just that and nothing more!

And that government created and imposed regulation is, our insane prohibition on, for peaceful purpose only, nuclear energy!

Namely MSR thorium and its almost free byproduct, alpha particle and miracle cancer cure, bismuth 213!

If they are too stupid to a generic man to see than the ban, theirs, on nuclear energy! Is also an effective ban on one of its most useful byproducts, namely, miracle cancer cure bismuth 213!

Then they who could remove the offending regulation with the stroke of a pen!

Need to be held to account for a death toll, that has and still does take more lives annually than the annual road toll. More than double and from all walks of life and demographics!

Most of who could have their mandatory death sentences lifted/removed via the application of this miracle nuclear, CONVENTIONAL WESTERN, medicine.

At last report, we only had 3 grams od bismuth 213 in the entire world and only because of the most asinine and inhuman prohibition on MSR thorium and its child, bismuth 213!

And only prevented by non-action by responsible governments!

Protecting the financial interests of themselves? And or their conies in the, fossil fuel industry, big nuclear and big pharma?

There seems no other possible logical explanation!? If an annual death toll and one that's remained stubbornly undiminished over thirty years and continues! Is not a first-order priority emergency? Then pray tell, how much death toll do we need to sit still for, until it is!?
Alan B.

Valley Guy, you nailed it ! Most of the government (local, state. Federal) relies on the good nature of people such as your partner to carry their various "cans", because they won't allocate enough funds to organisations such as RFS. Far easier to spend $300 million on overseas aid to Indonesia each year than to get fresh rations for firefighters mate...sorry ! Saddened to hear she was abused. My Uncle lost everything in the recent fires in Rappville, lucky to get through it all with the clothes on his back. Maybe the topic/thread here should have read: "The Elephant in the room"...? Terrorism per se, terrorists et al and the subject of the post is another one of our governments devices to subjugate (by fear) the masses. The Romans called it "divide et impera" or as we say today: "Divide and conquer". Whip up some hysteria over a relatively unlikely happening...let's say being bitten by a funnel web spider and the media goes nuts. Same same terrorism. Examine the Lindt cafe siege a few years ago. Was it really the act of a terrorist or just a religious nut, something like a David Koresh & the Waco, Texas event in the USA. Koresh could, today, be interpreted as a "terrorist" under current legislation - US or Australian. What is a terrorist ? I sat many years ago, just a young soldier 22 yrs old, in a room full of experts at the time. This was mind you only 18 months after the Iranian Embassy Siege in London. Then, as now their collective definition of a terrorist was this: "It is a person or persons acting on what their beliefs, experiences and hatreds direct them towards." A terrorist could be the kid next door who Googles how to make an improvised explosive from the Anarchists Cookbook, takes it to school tomorrow because he/she was bullied and detonates it killing fellow students. Who then is the terrorist amongst us?

The handful of aged pensioners left in her brigade will have to service the wider community.

Valley Guy,
People like Paul1405 think Pensioners are of no use to society.