Lindt inquest fallout: The siege mentality was totally missing

THE Lindt siege inquest shows that police, even while was in progress, to be concerned by fears of a backlash against Muslims, says Tim Blair.

BESIDES ridiculous levels of fitness and superhuman devotion to training, there is another important difference between average human beings and the athletes returning from Rio with gold medals in their luggage.

That is their ability to concentrate — to focus entirely on the moment, excluding all possible distractions.

It’s an extraordinary talent and a difficult one to maintain.

Former Australian Test cricket captain Greg Chappell used to consciously set himself several levels of awareness and concentration while batting because holding complete focus all the time was so draining.

He’d reserve absolute concentration only for the moments when he was facing a delivery.

In a similar fashion, airline pilots train for circumstances that are extremely rare.

When something goes wrong, and an ill-judged decision may result in disaster, that training and an associated intense focus are called upon.

For police, a terrorist siege is the equivalent of losing an engine at 12,000m. Many lives depend on each step taken thereafter. Talk to pilots and they’ll tell you that the key during any emergency is to remain in the present — not to be bothered with any distracting concerns about what might happen or could happen or won’t happen.

NSW Deputy commissioner Cath Burn leaves the Lindt cafe siege inquest / Picture: John Grainger

Some of Australia’s most senior police could learn from athletes and pilots.

Last week we discovered from the inquest into Sydney’s deadly Martin Place siege that senior police allowed themselves, even while the siege was in progress, to be concerned by fears of a backlash against Muslims.

Instead of maintaining a fixed focus on the 2014 siege to the exclusion of all else, they actually devoted time and thought to something that was never going to happen and in fact never has happened to any great extent. The “backlash against Muslims” is a modern myth. Yet here was NSW Deputy Police Commissioner Cath Burn last week explaining her siege strategy.

“I needed to emphasise community harmony while urging people to provide any information that could help,” she told the inquest.

“It was paramount that my messaging conveyed tolerance so as not to fuel anger which might have led to bias-motivated crime.”

The families and friends of the two people who were killed in the Martin Place siege might wonder at a senior police official who believed her primary role was to “emphasise community harmony” while a maniac held 18 hostages. Community harmony at that point was not really on the table.

And why would any senior police officer be thinking about “bias-motivated crimes” that haven’t yet occurred while a bias-motivated crime, one that would eventually cost two lives, was at that very moment underway? Deal with the now, Deputy Commissioner, not the future.

Equally worrying are the assumptions implicit in Burn’s line about it being “paramount that my messaging conveyed tolerance so as not to fuel anger”.

The Deputy Commissioner apparently believes Australia is such a seething, violent hateland that one mistaken remark from a cop will spark a widespread uprising. Marvel, please, at the awesome powers of Cath Burn, who single-handedly decides the nation’s fate. Were it not for her delicate phrasing and gentle ways, hordes of us would be burning mosques and beating up the local halal butcher.

As it happens, most Australians would not remember a single thing Burn or her fellow senior officers said during the Martin Place siege. That’s because they were concentrating on the siege itself.

In Melbourne one very significant executive demanded a top-level meeting be delayed until a portable TV was available to follow siege coverage. News Corp journalists returned from holidays and even maternity leave to cover the siege. A certain focus was evident throughout the land.

On concentration, Australia’s senior police might take a lesson from retired US airline pilot Chesley Sullenberger. In 2009 Sullenberger was at the controls of an Airbus A320 as it departed New York’s LaGuardia airport. Shortly after takeoff the jet’s two engines were disabled when they inhaled a flock of geese.

A US Airways jet with more than 150 people on board came down into the frigid Hudson River off Manhattan in 2009.

Sullenberger suddenly found himself in charge of a 60,000kg glider, which isn’t a viable long-term situation.

Quickly casting about for landing options, he decided to aim the aircraft, loaded with 155 passengers, at the Hudson River.

“I had to summon up from somewhere within me this professional calm that really isn’t calm at all. It meant having the discipline to compartmentalise and focus on the task at hand despite the stress,” Sullenberger later explained.

Sullenberger’s ability to concentrate saw him successfully land, or river, that Airbus with the loss of not a single life. He is now available for speaking appearances.

DEBT CRISIS SUDDENLY BECOMES ACADEMIC

GOOD news, everybody! It turns out Australia doesn’t have any economic problems at all. Not a single one! In fact, we’re so bursting with cash we continue spending millions of dollars on completely pointless vanity projects for academics. If that isn’t a clear sign of a robust and debt-free economy, I don’t know what is.

Surely a government that genuinely believes we have serious debt and deficit issues wouldn’t give more than $500,000 to the University of NSW for a project that “intends to address how the evolutionary phenomena of intra-sexual competition and intersexual conflict interact with economic circumstances to shape gendered behaviour and attitudes”. It’s difficult to tell what’s meant by “intersexual conflict interacting with economic circumstances” but it’s probably something to do with taxpayers getting screwed.

Over at Canberra’s ANU, researchers have been handed $467,997 “to investigate warfare in the ancient Tongan state through a study of earthwork fortifications”. Apparently this will benefit Australia “by showing how changes to political systems are associated with phases of conflict and peace”.

Those ancient Tongans have so much to teach us. Also at the ANU, $414,000 will be wasted on a study that will “engage with one of the central debates in Tibetan philosophy concerning truth, realism and epistemic justification”. Does Tibetan philosophy say anything about closing worthless universities?

Sydney University collected $405,000 to “better understand how irrelevant speech in open-plan offices affects the occupants’ cognitive performance and creates annoyance leading to a loss of productivity”. Never mind irrelevant speech. Do these people have any idea how annoying it is to fund irrelevant academics? For a mere $105,000, Monash University will propose “a new philosophical vision of what it means to be human”. Bargain! Perhaps these new humans won’t be another bunch of cash-draining grant hogs whose sole contribution to Australian intellectual life is to degrade it.

If we’re so crazy rich we can afford this kind of thing — and we obviously are because no sane government would waste money on trivialities during an era of serious debt — then we should view all of this as a positive. We must be loaded.

TWO WORDS THAT ARE LOST IN TRANSLATION

IN a matter of considerable bafflement, French police say they have no idea what could have motivated a chap who shouted “Allahu Akbar” and then stabbed an elderly Orthodox Jewish man.

Police in Strasbourg told BBC News the attack was “not terrorist related”. Well, obviously. Also last week, two motiveless individuals were killed after attempting to murder Russian police. A video was subsequently released showing the attackers predicting further violence and shouting “Allahu Akbar”. Could there possibly be some connection?

Over in Albania, the city of Vlore recently heard the old “Allahu Akbar” cry from an utterly unmotivated fellow named Dijar Xhema during his repeated kidnap attempts. According to police: “These actions in public places were accompanied by cries of ‘Allahu Akbar’, ‘I’ve been sent by Allah’ and ‘I will kill you all.’ ”

An online newspaper reported: “If it is established that Xhema was motivated by religious radicalism, it would be the first time an Islamist attacker has targeted people inside Albania.” Perhaps there’s a hint in Xhema’s words.

Britain’s Sunday Express last week carried a story from Vienna, where people ran for their lives after a Turkish gent began screaming “Allahu Akbar” in a crowded town square.

“Police rushed to the scene as people were trampled to the ground in the stampede,” the Express reported.

It’s as though these words have some kind of mysterious significance. Until they can be decoded, motives will remain unknown.