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 Government to roll out a military response. Australian resources were no longer deployed to rescue them and review their claims but to repel them and defend the borders against them.
If they made their way to Australian soil, they could be treated as prisoners of war and detained, although without many of the protections enjoyed by prisoners of war. It also seemed reasonable that the actions launched against them and the treatment dealt out to them should be protected by the operational secrecy proper to military operations.
Other changes naturally followed. Detention centres, once legal only for administrative purposes, became seen as places of punishment and deterrence for enemies, and became increasingly indistinguishable from prisons. It was natural to seek impunity for those guarding them.
The same logic suggests that the secrecy proper to military operations will be progressively extended to more aspects of their treatment, and that breaches of it will be criminalised. And that government ministers and opinion makers will assure us that each new turn of the screw is humane and that we can trust them to implement it justly.
In South Africa this logic led to the development of a department of homeland security, to pass laws, identity checks, preventative detention and the like. And all the while the Government and its compliant media insisted that it could be trusted to act humanely.
Australia, however, differs from South Africa in one crucial respect. The war against asylum seekers here is waged against foreigners, not against people settled in Australia. It would be a large step to treat resident Australians as enemies.
It is not unimaginable, of course. Muslims in Australia, for example, are already seen as problems by some Australians. Each atrocity abroad and each person acting out alienation at home reinforces the prejudices of those who believe that the communities and their religion and ethnicity are a problem. Mercifully, these opinions are rebutted by responsible and informed Australians.
Only extremists regard Muslims as enemies. But if a populist and incompetent government were to scapegoat them and declare them to be enemies, as was done to asylum seekers, it would be a short step to build on the laws already introduced and harry them through further discriminatory legislation. That in turn would lessen the protections under the law that other groups would enjoy.
Of course, this could never happen in Australia. But that is what they once said in Germany, Chile and South Africa.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.
Image: Shutterstock