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The oppressive state - frank and fearless public servants trashed

By Warren Reed - posted Tuesday, 7 July 2009


The ultimate vindication of what Kessing and his Unit were fighting for came on Sunday, March 22, this year when two Bikie gangs fought a pitched battle inside the domestic terminal at Sydney Airport. They bludgeoned one member to death in front of frightened men, women and children checking their bags in. Airport security had failed the public badly, just as Kessing and his colleagues had pointed out it would unless the matter was taken seriously. Surveillance blind spots were, as expected, one of the key weaknesses.

The Sunday Telegraph reported on June 28 that a few weeks ago a man - 21 and of no fixed address - was found at Sydney Airport wandering about on the tarmac. He was apprehended by an airport cleaner. He was charged, appeared in court and was fined $200.

Now that’s what you call airport security. Imagine how Allan Kessing and his colleagues feel, having done their job to the full.

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But again, nobody in the Canberra system - or at Sydney Airport - has ever had to take responsibility for these successive failures. Just like no one has ever been called to account for the security fiasco that Sydney witnessed in September 2007 when 21 world leaders had gathered for the APEC conference. Who can forget what the ABC-TV Chaser team achieved in breaking through two inner cordons in a convoy of three large black vehicles to reach within metres of the entrance to then President George Bush’s hotel?

Australians really need to think seriously about how their democracy works. Without responsibility and accountability it cannot be cleansed, and that is a crucial process if it is to continue the way we want it to - or take for granted it will. No matter how creative and endearing our obsession with sport, gardening and cooking might be, we’ll have to be far more alert and alarmed if we’re going to get over the line on this, the biggest issue of all.

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About the Author

Warren Reed was an Australia-Japan Business Cooperation Committee scholar in the Law Faculty of Tokyo University in the 1970s. He later spent ten years in intelligence and was also chief operating officer of the Committee for Economic Development of Australia. He served in Asia, the Middle East and India.

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