Libertarianism gone mad: the IPA and our security

Thursday, 09 May 2013 01:22

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Since 2001 more than a hundred Australians have been killed by terrorists. Thankfully, no-one has been killed on Australian soil. This is not a matter of luck, but of effective work by our police and security services.

PM Abbott 2016: how much can a koala bear?

Friday, 19 April 2013 02:57

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'Tony Abbott is an intellectual nobody.’ Paul Keating

'When simple-minded people get power because of their charm, it can be very dangerous'. Elia Kazan.

Sacrificing security: the sad story of IPA zealotry

Friday, 19 April 2013 00:37

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In February this year, Simon Breheny started campaigning against a bid from ASIS to expand its powers to that it could collect information on Australian citizens that threaten its operations.

Ongoing war against terror

Thursday, 28 March 2013 04:53

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I’d like to give you a very brief survey of some national security issues which don’t always get the media attention they deserve, but which remain vitally important to our freedom and security. As you probably know, I am chair of the Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade. I’m also a member of the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security.

This combination puts me in a very good position to know what is happening in national security matters, and of some of the work being done by our security agencies. The eleven years since 9/11 have seen the western democracies, including Australia, faced with the unprecedented challenge of a world-wide campaign of terrorism conducted mainly by non-state actors such as al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiah. During the Cold War, we knew who our enemy was, we knew who was in control in Moscow and we knew what rules they played by. Now we face an enemy which is diffuse, unstructured and always changing, a loose network of terrorist cells and individuals who are hard to track and hard to predict.