Colin James: Atrocity in Nice reminds us why Australia cannot become complacent about the threat of ISIS terrorism

WILL this lunacy ever stop? Can we please just have one week where the world is at peace, for all our sakes, writes Colin James.

• ROLLING COVERAGE: Horrific terrorist attack in Nice, France
• GALLERY: Photos of the atrocity in Nice
• LUCKY ESCAPE: Adelaide couple nearly caught up in attack

WILL this lunacy ever stop? Can we please just have one week where the world is at peace and our televisions are not clogged with horror.

Just last Friday I stood with a group of colleagues in The Advertiser newsroom watching live coverage of the Dallas shootings, which included the sickening moment when a psychopathic Army veteran shot a police officer in the back while the city was paralysed by fear.

This morning we again are in shock as we process stories, images and videos of the terrible carnage in Nice, where French Bastille Day celebrations have been destroyed by a maniac behind the wheel of a prime mover attached to a semi trailer.

Amongst the material passing across our desks and computer screens are images which, in our professional view, are just too graphic and upsetting to share publicly.

But we still have to sit here, looking at them, digesting what they represent.

It has been almost a year since this newsroom came to a temporary halt as our 30-odd television screens broadcast footage of the fatal shooting of American journalists Alison Parker and Adam Ward while they conducted a live interview.

At the time we were just dumbstruck that such an act of violence was being shown, virtually live, on television, Twitter and Facebook.

The flash of the muzzle was visible on footage widely broadcast and shared on social media.

It was, for many of us, a seminal moment in the rapidly evolving digital coverage of breaking news where shocking events can be delivered across the world in a heartbeat.

Since then the United States, with its insane gun laws, has endured the San Bernardino shootings, the Orlando nightclub massacre and, just last week, the killing of five police officers in Dallas.

Unlike what has happened in Europe and the Middle East, only one of these has been directly linked to supporters of the insidious ISIS, the biggest single threat to Western civilisation the world has faced since the Nazis.

Since January 2015 these fanatics have claimed responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo shootings, the Ankara bombings, the Paris attacks, the Brussels suicide bombings, the Istanbul airport attack and now, no doubt, Nice.

Horrifically, these are only the dreadful events which have been given saturation media coverage in Australia.

Since August last year there have been 91 reported terrorist incidents across the world — or roughly one every four days.

Many of these have occurred in Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Most have not received any coverage in Australia.

Two co-ordinated bombings, only two weeks ago in Baghdad, killed 300 people and injured 221 others.

The attacks, the biggest since the Allied forces withdrew, barely rated a mention in the Australian media.

Instead they were confined to the world pages of most newspapers.

In Australia we have been fortunate to be spared terrorism of this scale.

Nice’s Bastille Day horror

VIEW GALLERY

While ISIS has been attacking its European, Middle Eastern and African targets at will, this country only has experienced the Melbourne police stabbing, Parramatta police station shooting and Lindt Cafe siege in Sydney.

We should count ourselves very lucky.

How much longer we will be spared is anyone’s guess.

Is it because of our border security, intelligence agencies, police forces and general vigilance?

Or are we just off the radar while ISIS and its sycophants use encrypted apps and social media networks to plot their evil deeds.

There was a lengthy debate a couple of years ago about the Federal Government’s right to access metadata.

Anyone who opposed it should turn on their televisions today and watch what has happened in Nice.

There is no room in Australia for complacency about the threat of terrorism. It is real. It exists.

We became a target when John Howard joined the United States by declaring war on Islamic extremists two days after the Bali bombings in 2002.

Any Australian who believes we are safe and immune is living in a fool’s paradise.

We must, as hard and distressing it is, ensure we keep following events around the world as ISIS continues to spread its poisonous tentacles.

We can’t just plug our ears, shrug our shoulders and bury our heads in the sand, hoping it will all just go away.

Neither can we become so desensitised we don’t even pay attention anymore, opting instead to ignore news coverage because what is happening has become just so awful.

If that happens, we have given up caring what happens beyond our shores.

And that would be appalling.

Colin James is digital breaking news editor for The Advertiser. In 2002 he covered the Bali bombings which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.