{"id":21432,"date":"2015-07-07T06:00:29","date_gmt":"2015-07-06T20:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=21432"},"modified":"2015-07-06T13:43:40","modified_gmt":"2015-07-06T03:43:40","slug":"the-paradox-of-increased-counter-terrorism-spending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-paradox-of-increased-counter-terrorism-spending\/","title":{"rendered":"The paradox of increased counter-terrorism spending"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Australia\u2019s leading academic researcher on public opinion has produced a fascinating study that draws together public surveys of defence and national security attitudes.<\/p>\n

The report by ANU\u2019s Ian McAllister is part of a public consultation paper on the Defence White Paper that was released last week<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The finding that caught my attention was the level of concern held by Australians about being a victim of a terrorist attack expressed in polls from 2007 and 2009.<\/p>\n

The report cites those polls to claim a widespread concern among the public that they, or a close family member, will be the victim of a terrorist attack, with between 44% and 49% \u2018very concerned\u2019 or \u2018somewhat concerned\u2019 about the prospect.<\/p>\n

These conclusions add historical perspective to the findings of this year\u2019s Lowy Institute poll<\/a>, which revealed that the proportion of Australians considering themselves \u2018very safe\u2019 has plunged to its lowest level in the Lowy polls’ 11 year history to just 24%, down from 42% in 2010. Terrorism was the main factor here.<\/p>\n

In recent years, we\u2019ve increased public spending on counter-terrorism. After peaking in 2008\u201309 at around $800m per year, funding for counter-terrorism fell to just over $500m at the 2013\u201314 budget and was due to fall even further by 2017-18.<\/p>\n

The funding situation changed not long after last year\u2019s budget when the Abbott government, responding to Islamic State\u2019s invasion of Iraq and growing concerns about the terrorist threat in Australia, announced a four-year, $630m package to improve capability in Customs, the Federal Police, the Australian Crime Commission, ASIO and others. Some of this money was allocated to the task of countering violent extremism (CVE).<\/p>\n

The May 2015 budget continued the trend by giving another $296m to ASIS, $131m to help industry and government agencies pay for the metadata retention initiative, and a further $22m for CVE.<\/p>\n

The spending was rounded out with another $750m<\/a> to fund the ADF deployment to Iraq, Afghanistan and the broader Middle East.<\/p>\n

But poll findings point to something of a paradox here: the more we\u2019re spending on national security, the more our community seems to feel apprehensive about its safety.<\/p>\n

Yes, we have the problem of Australians joining the ranks of foreign fighters<\/a>,\u00a0and on the home front we\u2019ve experienced the stabbing of police in Melbourne in September last year and the Sydney Martin Place siege in December. But fortunately we\u2019ve not seen the major terrorist attacks here that have occurred in other developed countries.<\/p>\n

It\u2019d appear, however, that what the survey findings are telling us is that when it comes to terrorist incidents, the Australian public, perhaps like other western states, sets the bar at zero; we\u2019re demanding that there simply won\u2019t be an attack, even though Ian McAllister\u2019s study reports that anything between one in three and two in three people believe that an attack on Australian soil\u00a0is likely.<\/p>\n

I suspect that one of the reasons why the public is feeling less secure is that while they might demand no attacks, they\u2019re also aware that we\u2019re going to have to be lucky all the time, whereas the terrorists only have to be lucky once<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I also suspect that with dramatic media coverage of lone-actor terrorist attacks, such as those we’ve seen in Canada, Tunisia and the UK , the Australian public<\/a> haven\u2019t really factored in that our \u2018security and law enforcement agencies have collaborated to disrupt the terrorist activities of numerous individuals and a number of larger-scale plots.\u2019<\/p>\n

With the alert level being elevated last September, warnings to the public that IS are coming \u2018after us\u2019, and extensive media coverage of IS\u2019s barbarity, it’s not surprising that the community may have doubts about security on the home front.<\/p>\n

The result: the public seems pretty happy to see more investments in public safety. And we\u2019re also willing to make further privacy sacrifices to achieve security.<\/p>\n

According to a recent Newspoll<\/a>, (surveying 1,210 adults in April this year), 79% of Australians surveyed supported monitoring of social media to detect possible terrorist activity.<\/p>\n

Given the level of public insecurity revealed by these polls, it\u2019s unlikely we’re going to see leaders shift the community\u2019s views on terrorism, even if they wanted to: indeed,\u00a0if further attacks were to occur on home soil, it\u2019d be \u2018game over\u2019 for any political leader who\u2019d explicitly downplayed the threat beforehand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Australia\u2019s leading academic researcher on public opinion has produced a fascinating study that draws together public surveys of defence and national security attitudes. The report by ANU\u2019s Ian McAllister is part of a public consultation …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":21433,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[416,273,895,544],"class_list":["post-21432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-australian-government","tag-counterterrorism","tag-islamic-state","tag-poll"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe paradox of increased counter-terrorism spending | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-paradox-of-increased-counter-terrorism-spending\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The paradox of increased counter-terrorism spending | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Australia\u2019s leading academic researcher on public opinion has produced a fascinating study that draws together public surveys of defence and national security attitudes. 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