Stop Laughing, this is a Matter of National Security

Friday, 1 November 2002

It was reassuring to read in this morning's Age that ASIO has conducted more home raids that the four publicised so far, and that

the only cases that had become public were ones where "someone wanted to make it public"

It's also good to hear that ASIO has "hard evidence" to justify its crackdown on Jemaah Islamiah. I have every confidence that in 30 years or so, when historians finally have the opportunity to examine that evidence, the suggestion that the raids were nothing more than a heavy-handed ASIO publicity stunt will be shown up for the cynical left-wing furphy that it is. After all we're only hearing about the raids because the targets have complained to the lefties at the ABC and Fairfax press who still have to come to terms with their new responsibilities in our rapidly developing Second Cold War.

There's only one thing that troubles me about this affair and that is that the government slipped up enough to allow the raids to be reported at all. These JI activists are obviously hostile to our democratic values and clearly don't understand that in a democratic society like Australia when armed police storm into your house looking for evidence of sedition, the done thing is take it on the chin like a bloody white man and, above all, keep quiet about it. The government should have foreseen that there would be complaints and press coverage and issued a D-Notice - or don't they have those any more? I hope that the Attorney-General recognises this serious omission and takes steps to ensure that it doesn't happen in future.

Update: Thanks to Ken Parish for bringing my attention to this piece of serious commentary on the raids by Alan Ramsey.