Let me begin by saying that it’s just as well that Essendon were put out of the AFL Finals last week because apparently ASIO have joined the Labor/AFL/ASADA conspiracy against them and have announced that they’re not letting any Bombers into the game tonight.

(Let me also seriously say that I believe that there is a real possibility that there’ll be a terrorist attack on Australian soil at some future point. So my pathetic joke is in poor taste and I’ll look as silly as Andrew Bolt should something happen.)

However, I have a couple of concerns that have nothing to do with Tony Abbott or poor jokes. For a change, I’m prepared to let him off the hook. After all, he only announced the threat. He was – rather unusually – taking the advice of experts.

A few days ago, David Irvine, the head of ASIO announced that he was thinking of raising the threat level from medium to high. I found it strange that he’d publicly speculate about such a thing. After all, a terrorist attack might occur at any time and should one occur after a statement like that, he could hardly say, “Wasn’t I clever to be thinking about raising the alert level!” Nobody would say that he was clever for thinking about it, but those naughty terrorists went ahead and did something before he made up his mind.

But I guess here’s the next point: What does it mean when the terrorist threat is lifted? I mean, am I meant to stay indoors? Spy on my neighbours? Wear a bullet proof vest? Am I meant to change my behaviour in any way?

And if the answer is no, I’m just being informed that there’ll be more overtime for those members of the public service that are there to protect us, then why do I need to know at all. After all, it’s not as if I would have ignored a group of people asking if I knew a flight school that would give them a discount if the lessons didn’t include making a landing. And it’s not as if this government thinks we need to be told about things. Usually, it’s just the old Joh Bjelke-Petersen, “Don’t you worry about that!” or “It’s Operational Commercial in Confidence Privacy Cabinet Briefing Paper That -If Released – Would Help The Enemy”!

If the threat is specific and they know about it, I don’t see that we’re in any more danger than the other day. If the threat is unspecific and it’s just because of all the things that Andrew Bolt writes, then surely I could have worked it that the threat is higher because we don’t send everyone back where they came from. (Including the Aborigines under 56, because, after all, Bolt was here first!)

Yep, I guess that’s why Abbott needed to give an extra $630 million to the make us more secure.

Mm, so why just a few weeks AFTER that happens do we find that the level of threat is HIGHER? Surely, after committing all that money it should be lower. I mean, if they’d raised the threat and then got the money, that’d make more sense to me.

Oh!

Of course, it was already higher. They just forgot to tell us.

Ah, good old national security. It distracted me from praising Abbott for strengthening our borders from those queue jumping asylum seekers. If they want to get here quickly without a lot of paper work why don’t they just apply for a 457 Visa?

I didn’t even write about Mark Kenny’s sycophantic article which appeared just two days after Abbott demanded more praise from the media . . .