Fed: The challenge of Terror Australis

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Fed: The challenge of Terror Australis

By Doug Conway, Senior Correspondent

SYDNEY, AAP - Never have Australians faced such a threat to their once sacrosanct wayof life. Or such a challenge.

The Australia of 2003 is fundamentally different from the one that headed buoyantlyinto 2002, and may never be the same again.

The Bali atrocity not only inflicted Australia's greatest peacetime loss on foreignsoil - almost half of the more than 180 lives so callously terminated, it gave the nationalpsyche its rudest jolt in decades.

No longer is terrorism something that happens to someone else.

Australians have since heard Osama bin Laden identify them specifically as a target.

Their own government has warned of possible attacks on home soil, and placed them onheightened terror alert for the first time in their history.

The Kuta Beach bombings were directed not at soldiers, or the politicians who sendthem to wars, but at so-called "soft" targets - holidaying footballers, surfers, honeymooners,birthday girls, shoppers and other innocents abroad.

The youngest was 13, the oldest 68.

A 28-year-old Sydney woman died fully 58 days after the blasts.

They were murdered by total strangers, one of them seemingly a suicide bomber, whoturned a nightclub into a slaughterhouse.

Many of those waging their own holy war against the west - including key operativeAmrozi, who incensed Australians by smiling and joking with Indonesian police - have beenarrested.

But others who coldly planned this madness, whose bombs virtually vaporized some victimsand mutilated others beyond recognition, are still out there.

Terrorists have since demonstrated in Kenya they are prepared to bomb tourist hotelsand even launch surface-to-air missiles at passenger jets.

Daily life has new rules for survival, and routine activities might now attract suspicion- parking a car, renting a house, buying an airline ticket, filming a home movie.

Ultimately, however, there are no rules.

It is the killers who pick the hour, location, method and target of their choosing- any time, any place, anyhow, anyone.

No government on earth can guarantee to prevent this, as John Howard admitted whenhe vowed to "get the bastards".

Even if Indonesian and Australian authorities do get these bastards, every last oneof them, what other bastards might rise in their place?

No wonder ordinary people feel so vulnerable.

Politically, Bali elevated Howard to a new level of command, accentuating a patternin which his popularity peaks have all followed calamities - from Port Arthur to EastTimor, the Tampa incident, September 11 and Afghanistan.

Howard has responded unerringly to his nation's insecurities, apart perhaps from avow that alarmed many of his own citizens as well as Asian leaders - that he'd be preparedto strike pre-emptively against terrorists in neighbouring countries.

Once chided for being a backward-looking fuddy-duddy, the wedge politician is now seenas the great uniter.

Howard has made such a virtue of his ordinariness that he has rendered Labor leaderSimon Crean all but irrelevant.

Bali reinforced the need in many Australian minds for a powerful ally like the United States.

Others argued it was that very allegiance that brought mayhem so close to their own backyard.

Even before Bali, Howard had become only the second prime minister after Bob Hawketo address the US Congress, declaring: "America has no better friend in the world thanAustralia."

That single sentence summed up foreign policy in a year in which Australia, at America'sbehest, waged war on Osama bin Laden and thought seriously about doing the same on SaddamHussein.

Supporters called Howard courageous, proactive and strategically smart, saying onlya fool would support appeasement and hope Iraq's weapons of mass destruction would simplydisappear.

Detractors wondered whether Australia should add stripes to the stars on its flag anddeclare itself the 51st state of the union.

Labor head-kicker Mark Latham notoriously called Howard an "arse-licker" who went toWashington to "kiss some bums and get patted on the head".

Former PMs of both major parties - Hawke, Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser - warnedthat joining any US assault without UN backing would constitute "a failure of duty ofgovernment to protect the integrity and ensure the security of our nation".

So did former defence chiefs, even gung-ho elements labelled the "Baghdad or bust" brigade.

Howard stopped short of doing so.

But his support for George W Bush, who set his sights on the "evil dictator who triedto kill my dad", was solid and unwavering.

Howard's enthusiastic rhetoric had rarely been heard since John Curtin steered theship of state from Britain towards America in WWII.

It was reminiscent of Australia going "all the way with LBJ" to Vietnam in the 1960s.

It continued a pattern of swift and unblinking responses to Uncle Sam's hollers forhelp in the Gulf twice in the 1990s and more recently in Afghanistan.

But while a hawkish commitment to defence and national security helped Howard win the2001 election, many Australians have begun to doubt the wisdom of going to another warhalf a world away.

They had enough pain and sadness to deal with in 2002.

Apart from Bali, six teenagers died in a car smash south of Sydney, six people diedin a plane crash in the Whitsundays, five Aussie surfers perished in a plane crash inManila, two students in a shooting rampage at Melbourne's Monash University, and fourcrew of the yacht Excalibur drowned off the NSW coast.

Prolonged drought rocked the farming community - a NSW farmer paid a record $1,800for one Olympic pool-sized megalitre of water - and ushered in a frighteningly early startto the bushfire season.

Confidence in the great public institutions continued to wane.

Sydney's Catholic Archbishop George Pell temporarily stood aside after being accusedof child molesting. He was ultimately cleared.

Former Anglican church leader Peter Hollingworth proved inept at handling allegationshe covered up incidents of sex abuse, and his standing as Governor-General was seriouslyundermined.

Big business was accused of paying its high-fliers obscenely vast sums, with CommonwealthBank chief executive David Murray receiving a $4.65 million "golden handcuff" for 10 yearsservice.

Divisive ABC boss Jonathon Shier got a $1 million payout after his early departure.

Rodney Adler, a key witness at the HIH royal commission, was banned from holding companydirectorships for 20 years, then faced criminal charges of market manipulation which carrya possible jail term.

Former NRMA president Nick Whitlam was banned, too, for breaching corporations laws,a penalty he is appealing.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp announced a $12 billion loss - the biggest in Australiancorporate history - after writing down the paper value of assets, notably the GemstarTV Guide.

Ansett Airlines was grounded after 66 years in the skies.

Though interest rates remained low, they still crept up twice by a total of half apercentage point.

Tawdry political scandals included Cabinet secretary Bill Heffernan's unfounded allegationthat gay judge Michael Kirby misused commonwealth cars and trawled for rent boys. He wassacked for it.

The infamous "children overboard" claims that helped Howard win an election had tobe recanted, and Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock's daughter Kirsty was so disillusionedby his boatpeople policies that she left the country.

The asylum seeker cause was damaged, too, when its public face, the tearful Baktiyariboys, sought refuge at the British consulate in Melbourne only for doubts to be cast onthe claims of their detained father.

Carmen Lawrence cited a timid boatpeople policy when jumping overboard from Labor'sship of state, and dragging Simon Crean even lower in the water with her.

The Democrats did their best to self-destruct, going through three leaders in a shambolicchange from Natasha Stott Despoja to Andrew Bartlett, just as the public learned of formerleader Cheryl Kernot's one-time affair with Labor colleague Gareth Evans.

Labor held power all around the country at state and territory level - with the SteveBracks landslide in Victoria, Jim Bacon's re-election in Tasmania and Mike Rann's elevationin South Australia - but federally looked unelectable.

In the courts, former Labor MP Andrew Theophanus was jailed for six years for fraud and bribery.

Childers backpacker arsonist Robert Paul Long, 38, got life, and concerns about publicliability insurance were heightened by cases like the swimmer paralysed at Bondi beachwho was awarded $3.75 million damages.

Sport always gives Australians reason to puff out their chests, but for every Ian Thorpe,Lleyton Hewitt, Sarah FitzGerald and Karrie Webb this year there was a disaster.

Massive salary cap breaches cost raging NRL favourites the Bulldogs $500,000 and 37competition points.

Similar rorts cost AFL blue-bloods Carlton almost $1m, and one of the game's biggeststars, Kangaroos captain Wayne Carey, moved interstate after revelations of an affairwith his vice-captain's wife.

Former Sydney Swan Peter Filandia was banned for biting a VFL opponent's testicles.

Socceroo and Chelsea goalkeeper Mark Bosnich reportedly tested positive to cocaine,while Soccer Australia's president, chairman and chief executive all resigned amid boardin-fighting.

Bookmaker Robbie Waterhouse had a disqualification turned into a suspension on appeal,apologising for his "foolishness" in giving a punter mate 500-1 odds on 13 short-pricedfavourites at Canterbury last February.

Twins Steve and Mark Waugh were axed from Australia's one-day cricket team.

Mark pulled the plug on his Test career, too, when he was dropped from the Ashes series.

The passing parade of Australians to die this year included politicians Sir John Gorton,Jack Ferguson and George Georges, entertainers Leo McKern, Ruth Cracknell and Gwen Plumb,writer Dorothy Hewett, AFL identity Dick Reynolds and rugby's Greg Smith, former Russianspy Edvokia Petrov, euthanasia advocates Nancy Crick and Shirley Nolan, and old soldiersSir Roden Cutler, Alf Garland, the last Gallipoli survivor Alec Campbell and 111-year-oldJack Lockett, Australia's oldest man.

Then there was Jason Oliver.

He died in a racetrack fall in Perth a week before his little brother won the MelbourneCup, saluting the heavens as he passed the post and declaring: "I'd give it back rightnow to have my brother back."

Damien Oliver's triumph told a nation still in mourning after Bali that amid all thehorror there is hope.

It was the fairytale finish Australia badly needed.

AAP dc/jc/sp/sb

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