Contemptible kumbaya fuels fantasy of terror-free world

IN late 2003, when releasing a British discussion paper about where to draw the line between liberty and security after the September 11 terrorist attacks, then British home secretary David Blunkett said: “I am the custodian of civil liberties, but I do not own them.” Blunkett said the question of how best to balance civil liberties against the increased need for security was, ultimately, a matter for the people.

In other words, citizens must be part of the critical debate about how to protect society from the threat of terrorism. While the Tony Abbott’s national security statement on Monday morning was short on details, it kicked off an overdue debate about where to draw the line between liberty and security. Sensible, thoughtful reaction will signal our maturity in a world where, as the Prime Minister said, “The terrorist threat is rising at home and abroad, and it’s becoming harder to combat.”

Liberty, and the myriad rights that underpin it, is not absolute. Yet, in the Greens’ utopian world, rights resemble flowers in a carefully planned garden, each on its own stem, never touching each other. Like busy bees, the Greens jump from one bloom to the next, pollinating more and more rights, proclaiming their beauty in absolute terms.

Back in the real world, rights are often in conflict with one ­another. Terrorism has caused rights to clash even more violently. The right of fake sheiks to radicalise young men who would kill us tends to jar with our right to be safe. In other words, there are no absolutes, no perfect solutions as we work our way through the ­liberty v security quandary.

Alas, in a depressing case of deja vu, there is only dangerous delusion from the usual suspects. While lefty journos worried about the number of Australian flags ­behind Abbott and the lectern, Greens leader Christine Milne ­accused the PM of trying to “press the fear, anxiety, insecurity button” to cement his leadership.

What’s her answer to terrorism? Milne said we needed to set up a centre for social cohesion in Australia for poor, isolated types. Her contemptible kumbaya comments make a mockery of the innocent lives lost in the Lindt cafe only a few months ago.

In this critical national security debate, the Greens have demonstrated why they are dangerous to our democracy. It’s one thing to be clueless about budget reform. It’s something else entirely to be blind to the notion there is no ­liberty without security.

The Greens in the Senate have voted against every counterterrorism law put before them since the Abbott government came to office. If the Greens had their way, the National Security Legislation Amendment Act, the Foreign Fighters Act and the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment Act would not be law.

As the PM said, the arrests this month of two men in Sydney depended on the new provisions of the Foreign Fighters Laws. The men allegedly prerecorded for ­social media their plan to attack random Australians.

Last year, when the government proposed metadata laws — laws requested by our security agencies as necessary in the fight against a form of terrorism fuelled by the internet and social media — Greens Senator Scott Ludlum posted a YouTube rap video where he described the new laws as a “a fascist f---fest of Orwellian proportions”. Rapper Ludlum promised to “go full Gandalf on this government’s arse, smack down their laws with a dose of ‘you shall not pass’ ”.

That’s not even on the fringes of sensible debate. It’s puerile and, worse, it’s downright dangerous. Those who imagine the Greens as a kind of harmless and ethereal adornment to our federal parliament couldn’t be more naive. The Greens inhabit that self-indulgent world of power with no responsibility. When Australians die at the hands of terrorists, no one blames the Greens. It’s the role of the government to keep us safe. But if you draw taxpayer-funded wages and call yourself a senator, it’s high time you were held accountable for undermining our safety in the modern age of terrorism.

Proving their dangerously ill­og­ical consistency, Ludlum said on Monday that all 10 Greens senators would vote against the government’s planned metadata retention bill. Next time the Greens straddle their moral high horse about civil liberties, remember these people, put into the Senate to represent us, are offering the greatest protection to those who would kill us.

Ludlum is likely too busy watching himself on YouTube to be cognisant of the real world, where the Islamist death cult and its supporters spew out 100,000 social media messages a day, propagating their murderous message in numerous languages to draw more recruits to their cause.

Those whose immediate reaction is to denounce all and any counter-terrorism laws inhabit some kind of Pollyanna-ish world where young men born and bred in Australia aren’t radicalised through social media in their ­bedrooms, where they don’t swear allegiance to a death cult determined to destroy Western democracies, not to mention the governments of Iraq, Turkey, Jordan, Libya, Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, and so on.

In their fantastical world, a man doesn’t walk into a cafe in Sydney’s Martin Place wielding weapons, an Islamic State flag and a determin­ation to murder innocent people; men don’t walk into the offices of a French newspaper to kill journ­alists. Or a Jewish school to kill children. Or a Jewish deli to kill more Jews. Or a Copenhagen cafe to kill those chatting amiably about free speech. Or the Canadian parliament to kill those working at democratic government. Or the Canadian War Memorial to kill those guarding a shrine to those who fought for freedom.

The 9/11 Commission Report, which dealt with the circumstances that gave rise to the terrorist attacks in the US, found “the most important failure was one of imagination. We do not believe leaders understood the gravity of the threat”.

There is no excuse for such a failure today. The most important change mentioned by Abbott is not about new laws to revoke or suspend citizenship of dual nationals or strengthening terrorism advocacy laws. The critical tool to combat terrorism is the one before the parliament right now.

Metadata has been the common element to the most successful counter-terrorism operations this country has seen, foiling terrorist attacks on the country’s electricity grid, Sydney army barracks, the MCG and the plot last year to behead a member of the public.

Ludlum and his Greens comrades are willing to wager that the security agencies charged with keeping Australians safe are more dangerous than Islamist-minded terrorists planning to overthrow democracy. Worse than a failure of imagination, that’s a failure of grey matter — and should render the Greens irrelevant in a sensible and necessary debate.

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