Immediately after the 9/11 attacks I was struck by a journalist's remark that we were now entering a new and enduringly harsh world. At the time I thought it pessimistic, but the subsequent changes and the general acquiescence in them now suggest he may have been right.
Who then, for example, would have thought that the immigration department would now be the department for border security? Or that the military would be placed in control of Indigenous settlements? Or that people would be deprived of the protection of the law? Or that employees of transnationals would be given impunity for violence against people in their charge? Or that governments invade others' privacy freely, and have them jailed for letting others know? Or that these changes would be introduced with the support of both major parties?
Back then we might have imagined we were hearing of the first stages in states like Apartheid South Africa or Chile. It is worth reflecting on the process by which such changes, many of which were inspired by the threat of terrorism, come to be introduced and accepted without demur.
The shift is best seen in the case of people who seek protection by boat. At first refugees were welcomed. But because Australia is in a position to insist that people can enter only with valid visas, those who came by boat were seen as problematic. Their needs for protection as human beings were assessed and met initially, but they themselves came to be spoken of in terms that defined them not as people with problems, but as themselves problems.
Terms like economic migrants, queue jumpers, dark skinned people and illegals defined them as different, and undesirably different.
Because they were seen as problems it became easy to ignore their humanity and to treat them as means to policy ends. This was the crucial step towards illiberal governance. It was generally seen as acceptable that they should be detained, deprived of support, and generally mistreated in order to deter others from coming.
From regarding them as problems rather than as human beings with problems, it was a short step to see and treat them as enemies. They were a threat to Australian security, to the security of our borders, the pawns of hostile people smugglers, perhaps the fifth column of terrorism.
If they were enemies with whom Australia was in a covert war, it then became seen as acceptable for the Australian