Where did Paul Daley dredge up his fantasies (“Accountability takes no prisoners”, The Sunday Canberra Times, June 29, p27) about Australia being threatened by stateless armies of terrorists, and stateless hoons with speedboats and dirty bombs? This kind of irresponsible journalism sits with the Howard Government’s fantasies or propaganda about Australia being threatened by refugees in leaky boats throwing their children overboard.
But I suppose we need these fantasies to justify the hundreds of billions of dollars we spend on defence, including ill-defined, uncosted and ultimately wasteful projects invested in to meet possible “threat”, without any clear idea of what these might be or how or why they could emerge. People treat us as we treat them. If we are a friendly, helpful and sympathetic nation, we need have no fear of threats from stateless people.
Michael McCarthy, Deakin
The Canberra Sunday Times – 6 Jul 2008