Is that burning Reichstag that I smell?

In this context, the grievances of Australian Moslems, who uphold more traditional social values are understandable and need to be heard. Indeed, I do believe that if we middle-class white people could get over the vilification of the Islamic community, we would quickly discover that we share a lot more in common with these people than we do with their riotous white opponents.

As is always the case, every complex problem always has a simple answer, and it’s always the wrong answer. It is always wrong to blame one ethnic group for a country’s social problems. It is always wrong to target a particular religion as being the cause of violence. It is always wrong to make permanent life-changing decisions for an entire country based on a knee-jerk reaction of fear to some faceless terror. And it is always wrong to silence dissenting voices as being unpatriotic - something that now appears to be a part and parcel of the new anti-terror laws.

We’ve seen this all before. History teaches us that it’s only a short walk from the burning of the Reichstag to the “Night of the Long Knives”. More recent history (for example, in Malaysia, Singapore and Israel) has shown us that when countries introduce special police powers to deal with a state of emergency, the laws remain after the emergency has subsided, and are used to silence all sorts of dissenting voices.

The future for this country is very much unknown at the moment. I picked up one clear indicator in the newspaper though: Australia’s “Patriotic Youth League” - the local equivalent of the Hitler Youth - is currently experiencing an unprecedented surge in membership.