Travel just got a whole lot harder. As if those wasted hours spent standing in disconsolate queues, removing shoes and jackets and laptops, discarding perfectly good bottles of water and wine and body lotion, submitting to random drug tests and full-body scans and being barked at by security guards weren't enough to put people off air travel, the newest restrictions might do the trick.
Taking the lead from the US and the UK, which recently announced the prohibition of laptops and large electronic devices on flights from certain Middle Eastern and North African countries, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has confirmed that Australia is contemplating doing the same.
The motivation for such a ban would be, ostensibly, to keep us all safe from the laptop-generated bombs — undetectable on airport security systems — that have apparently been developed by ISIS and other terrorist organisations.
The countries targeted by the US and the UK are said to have less reliable systems in place for the detection of such explosive devices, and so by banning large electronic devices on flights originating from these places, travellers will be protected from potential harm.
This may well be the case — after all, terrorism has become rampant and airlines are a vulnerable target, especially in this age of widespread travel. To be sure, steps must be taken to protect travellers from those who wish them harm.
But Australia should think carefully about adopting a ban that singles out Muslim majority countries under the guise of keeping its citizens safe. In so doing, it will be hitching itself to President Donald Trump's blatant anti-Muslim agenda, which arose early in his presidency with his ban on travellers from Muslim majority countries.
While it might make sense to ban potential bomb-carrying devices on flights from those countries where terrorist groups tend to be based, in reality it negatively profiles these countries and the people who come from them. This is precisely the kind of dog whistle politics the likes of Trump and our own Pauline Hanson have engaged in in an effort to stir up anti-Muslim sentiment among their constituents.
And the erratic implementation of this new policy arouses suspicion. While there is some overlap in the countries affected by the US and UK bans, their lists are not identical. Countries on the UK's list are absent from the US's, and vice versa. How will Australia determine which countries to include in its ban? If the