THE government's white paper on counter-terrorism is a landmark, a watershed, a signal moment: choose your metaphor.
What I mean to say is, it's a very important document, and for none of the reasons you have been hearing about in the past few days.
Sometimes the press gallery and the main media commentators so spectacularly miss the point that you wonder what universe they are living in.
For example, have you heard Hezbollah terror groups are operating in Australia? It's in the white paper, but not the media.
Have you heard the government has declared the level of terror threat a society faces depends on the size and composition of its Muslim minority? It's in the white paper but not the media.
The so-called announceables in the white paper were sensible, modest measures. Adding biometric scanning for visas for people from high-risk areas is a good step. As Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said in parliament yesterday, the 10 locations that will be named initially will not be the end of the story. The US requires everyone who enters the country to undergo fingerprint and retina scans. This is a limited measure. It only allows you to stop people already on your database. Nonetheless, it's a good move and I think should be extended to everyone who wants to come to Australia.
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Two chief lines of criticism of the government have emerged. One is that because the white paper and Kevin Rudd's remarks concentrate on the growing home-grown terror threat, he should have announcedmillions of dollars for domestic counter-radicalisation programs, as is done in Britain. This would be a catastrophe. Rudd deserves high praise for not going down this road.
Britain's anti-radicalisation program is a cross between a fiasco and a disaster. It has empowered extremists, defined extremely conservative Islam as mainstream and demoralised moderates. No country in the West has done worse with its Muslim minority than Britain. Canberra would be insane to emulate this. Britain has had more terror attacks than any nation in Europe. France, which doesn't have a counter-radicalisation program, has had none.
Do we really believe a federal bureaucracy that can't put pink batts into people's roofs safely can somehow find that tiny minority of Muslims who are destined to become terrorists and engage and convert them? If the federal government set out to convince me of anything I'd almost certainly end up believing the opposite. No doubt battalions of experts and ethnic con men are telling the government to splash out millions on people who will tell it there is a giant problem and only they can cure it. That way lies madness. The best counter-radicalisation program is a good, open decent society. Our settlement model is infinitely better than Britain's.
There are only two overt counter-radicalisation programs we should engage in. One is to provide intensive settlement assistance to people we take in under the refugee and humanitarian program. To bring someone from war and refugee camp-living in Somalia or Sudan, with no competence at living in our sort of society, and dump them in Footscray or Bankstown with a Centrelink leaflet is asking for trouble.
The other area we should work hard in is jails, where Islamist prisoners are recruiting people because they have much stronger beliefs than anyone around them.
The other criticism of the white paper is for using the term jihadist. If it really was Rudd who insisted on this he deserves high praise. It is crucial we tell the truth. The al-Qa'ida version of jihad, like that of the Muslim Brotherhood or of many Wahabi Muslims and of the strand of Shia represented by the Iranian government, is, terribly, a minority but longstanding tradition within Islam. To pretend otherwise is to intellectually disable ourselves.
The descriptive passages in the white paper are written in calm but straightforward language and have the virtue of telling the truth clearly and unapologetically.
For example, the white paper states of violent jihadism: "The scale of the problem will continue to depend on factors such as the size and make-up of local Muslim populations, including their ethnic and-or migrant origins, their geographical distribution and the success or otherwise of their integration into their host society."
This is a statement of the obvious but it is normally not allowed to be said. It begs the question: is it necessary for a liberal Western society to encourage immigration from predominantly Muslim countries with histories of significant minority support for extremism, when it is obvious such immigration will lead to big problems?
With a most welcome clarity of thought and expression, the white paper states that radicalisation can be assisted by marginalisation, but the key is attraction to the jihadist ideology, which it summarises quite well.
It also says: "There is no proven causal link between social disadvantage and terrorist behaviour." This is true, but again contradicts every bien-pensant orthodoxy. Rudd deserves a gold medal for speaking the truth in sentences such as that.
The passage on Hezbollah is fascinating. The white paper says that apart from jihadist terrorism, there are groups in Australia that support overseas terrorist organisations with money but may well decide to attack their enemies in Australia. The only organisation it nominates in this category is "Hezbollah's external security organisation". I think this means we can infer they are pretty active here and ASIO must have them under pretty tight surveillance if it's willing to talk about them in a public document.
The white paper confirms terrorism as a strategic threat, despite Hugh White's vapid denials in his regular Lateline sermons, because terrorists remain determined to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction.
One weakness, or contradiction, for the government is that the white paper rightly extols the need for tight border security, yet the government's policies have weakened border security to our north. Virtually any Middle East or South Asian Muslim who gets to Christmas Island now gets to stay in Australia permanently and ultimately gets access to family reunion. That's starting to be many thousands of people who have not been chosen under regular Australian procedures.
Nonetheless this white paper deserves a solid A plus.
When the ABC runs a news item on the latest convicted terrorists, they always add a rider at the end, "They say it was in retaliation for Australians killing Muslims overseas." This is not news. This is propoganda. It is an attempt to legitimise action. So why does the ABC see its role as disseminating this propoganda for the Jihadists? Why do they never challenge the legitimacy of the claim with a contrary view? We will never be able to conquer home-grown Jihadists while the mainstream media actively promote it, by constantly legitimising their actions.
Just read your article a second time and printed it off. The paragraph comparing Britain's anti-radicalisation program ("fiasco/disaster") to France, which doesn't have one, is salient. Hezbollah's external security organisation is run out of where? Syria/Lebanon - or more widespread?
The weakness or contradiction you mention in your closing paragraphs was, on first reading of the release, the first concern that leapt out for me. My overriding concern is that Multiculturalism, which I have never supported, has predictably set up an "us & them" society with Australian born citizens being identified by their antecedents country of birth and protesting they are not racist as gangs of newcomers set about cementing their place as ethnic groups in Australia. We need to support the people we adopt in Australia and allow them the courtesy of individual identity not to be labelled from get go as a separate entity. Allow us all to be identified as part of a society, that's why we or our antecedents adopted Australia as our home.
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