Australian politics

“It’s coming after us.” Like a modern day horror movie, this was the Australian prime minister’s theatrical response to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) group in the aftermath of the triple onslaught in Kuwait, France, and Tunisia. The attacks, he says, “illustrates once again, that as far as the Daesh [Isil] death cult is concerned, it’s coming after us”.
And the message is getting through. Australians are scared. The latest poll by the influential Lowy Institute suggests most Australians feel less safe than any time in the last decade. Of those polled, a majority (69 percent) see Isil as a high risk to Australia’s security.
While Australians may be terrified, the coalition government is riding high on a renewed wave of support. The newly self-assured Tony Abbott is polling strongly after a shaky start to the political year in which his leadership was challenged by a vote from within his own party. Just months ago, it seemed unlikely that he could survive the year with his premiership intact.
But what a difference four short months can make. The prime minister has found the golden gun, a policy so infused with his power and authority, and deemed so important to national security and Australian nationalism that it has stunned the political opposition into submission. They can do nothing, it seems, other than blindly follow his lead.
National security issues have descended into a political blood sport in which the conservative coalition is motivated not solely by the need to secure the borders and fight the terrorists but by the desire to score political points.
A leaked briefing document showed the political chicanery in play whereby the government’s controversial citizenship legislation was to be invigorated by its potential to cause harm to the government’s opponents.
So, how do you make a nation so scared that they will support increasing draconian legislation that limits the rights of all citizens? Well, if you are Tony Abbott, you seize upon every opportunity to talk about national security. You talk about terrorism, border security, the threat posed by Islamic fighters - and you talk about it incessantly.
You could dismiss this as political gamesmanship but in the increasingly high stakes political arena that is edging towards the possibility of an early election, is there a risk that the government is over-stating the threat posed? Just how great is the risk to Australia from ISIL and foreign fighters?
Like many western nations, a whole industry has emerged to discuss and dissect the motivations of foreign fighters but the actual figures remain opaque. While it is understandable that counting the numbers of men and women who have left Australia to fight with ISIL is an imprecise science, the available figures vary widely.
The Australian government security services estimate that around 150 to 250 fighters have left to fight for Isil. However, the most rigorous independent analysis puts the figure much lower, at just 54 Australian fighters currently in Iraq and Syria.
The April 2015 Lowy Institute poll uses open source data and, as such, is not privy to all information collected by Australia’s security services. However, the disparity in the figures is alarming. Given the frenzied media coverage given to any proven or suspected foreign fighter, it is unclear how the government’s figures could be five times higher than the figures taken from open source data.
Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has used the government figures to issue an alarming warning. Australia, she says, is the highest contributor per capita of foreign fighters to the Middle East.
It is a startling statistic, but how accurate is it? If you are politicking largely on the promise of keeping Australia safe, does it not suit your political objectives if Australians feel unsafe?
Excerpted from: ‘Fear, loathing and Australian politics’.
Courtesy: Aljazeera.com