Normally the cringeworthy desire for a local angle on a major international story is merely embarrassing for all concerned (“The Baltimore disaster shocked Sydney. Could we see a similar tragedy here?“). Combined with the instinctive desire of politicians, and many in the media, to always expand the security bureaucracy, however, it becomes something far less amusing.
The local angle on the Trump assassination attempt is indeed a breathless “could it happen here?” Rather like how, in the 1970s and 1980s, our media adored any mention of Australia by Americans, the question is asked in hope as much as fear; hope that we might get to emulate something the Americans are lucky enough to have — political violence as a ’70s TV show Christmas special shown in Australia the following September.
“I understand that it’s a developing situation and security agencies are still talking to each other, but has the AFP, or will the AFP reach out to MPs? Will extra security be offered in the wake of this?” one journalist demanded of the prime minister just a few hours after the shooting in the US on Sunday, unabashed in using the most execrable phrase in the journalistic lexicon.
By yesterday the opposition was demanding extra resourcing for the Australian Federal Police (AFP), with suggestions the AFP couldn’t send officers to protect MPs at a “higher risk” rally. Discredited former Home Affairs head Mike Pezzullo — who presided over numerous catastrophes at the Department of Home Affairs before being sacked for his political dealings — added his two cents’ worth, suggesting that “better integration” might be needed. Despite Home Affairs being a debacle since it was created, it seems Pezzullo will never give up on the dream of a single security super-agency.
Problem is, the AFP already has massive resources, courtesy of a large increase in funding from Labor over the past two years, on top of resources it was handed by the Coalition. According to the agency’s portfolio budget statements, a decade ago, the AFP’s operating funding was just under $1.3 billion and it employed 5,500 people. By 2022, its funding was $1.97 billion and it had a headcount of 7,355. Then Labor arrived and pumped up its resourcing even more: in the May budget it was allocated $2.25 billion and its headcount is 7,930.
Maybe the Liberals — allegedly the party of small government — should be asking why the AFP can’t, at least in their eyes, do its job despite regular real increases in its budget and workforce, rather than suggesting Labor isn’t providing enough funding. But that would entail a scepticism about security budgets that is entirely foreign to both major parties.
Labor has also massively increased the budget of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), from $790 million in the last Coalition budget to an expected $976 million this financial year — a cash increase of nearly a quarter. The senior bureaucrats of ASIO face little scrutiny from parliament about the efficiency and effectiveness of that funding — and even less scepticism from the major parties than the AFP.
While the rise of right-wing extremism, and the potential for Christchurch-style terror attacks, has pre-occupied security bureaucrats for some years now, the repeated focus at the moment from MPs is on pro-Palestine protesters, whom Albanese linked to political violence on Sunday and Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil similarly linked to violence last night. Social media — a favourite target of politicians and old media companies alike — also came in for a serve from O’Neil.
It’s clear messaging from Labor: protesting against industrial-scale mass murder in Gaza is illegitimate. It has joined climate protesting — the target of absurdly draconian restrictions by state Labor governments — as a form of protest that must be heavily controlled. In the process, “social cohesion” has gone from a positive goal of a multicultural society to a mantra for punishment and overpolicing and a synonym for the silence of assimilation.
“It seems like the democratic project is backsliding,” O’Neil said last night. “Not only in newer, less robust democracies but also in democracy’s heartland.” Quite.
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