Earlier this month, federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock sat down with his Labor opposite number, Joe Ludwig, at the NSW Parliament in one of the series of election debates between Government and Opposition figures. It was an uninspiring event that barely rated a mention in the media. Another debate, 10 days later, between Defence Minister Brendan Nelson and Opposition defence spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon was a similarly colourless and low-key affair.
National security has mostly been a non-issue in this campaign. It's a far cry from the 2001 and 2004 elections, when national security and the debate about which party was best qualified to prosecute the so-called war on terror was centre stage. John Howard's refusal to let the captain of the MV Tampa land asylum-seekers in Australia in 2001, and the terrorist bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta in 2004, are now regarded as crucial to the Coalition's victories even though the ALP was quick to endorse the Government's responses in both cases.
If national security, defence and border protection issues have been little discussed this time, they remain critically important to Australia's future the more so given the lack of progress by the United States and its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the now frequent and disturbing revelations of abuses against Australian citizens (and foreign nationals legally working here) perpetrated by the Australian Federal Police, the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, and the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation.
Far from making Australia safer, the Howard Government's actions since the 9/11 atrocities have neither reduced the threat of home-grown terrorism in Australia nor advanced our interests abroad. Instead, the substantial new legal powers and resources granted to the AFP, ASIO and other security agencies have led to a string of serious cases of civil rights abuses and probably alienated some of those moderates within the Muslim community whose support and sympathy is crucial if radical elements are to be successfully tracked and monitored.
The Government's decision to support the US invasion of Iraq on the bogus pretext that Saddam had links to jihadist terrorists and was hiding weapons of mass destruction has been an unambiguous disaster for Australia's international reputation. Even had the decision to send Australian forces to Iraq been justified by other considerations such as the need to bolster support for the US alliance the subsequent unravelling of the American occupation ought to have prompted a rethink of Australia's involvement.
Not only has George W.Bush's repudiation of international law and of multilateralism and the United Nations failed to deliver peace and democracy to the Iraqi people, it has undermined the considerable moral and international authority America enjoyed after 9/11. As a close ally of the US, Australia has sustained considerable collateral damage to its reputation as well especially after Howard's ill-advised declaration in December 2002 that he reserved the right to make pre-emptive strikes against terrorist threats in neighbouring countries.
Howard restated his willingness to launch pre-emptive strikes again in the 2004 campaign, but has since shown a more nuanced appreciation of the geostrategic challenges facing Australia and of the need to gain the support and cooperation of neighbours like Indonesia and the Philippines in the struggle against terrorism.
National security issues have receded in this campaign in part because the ALP has so closely shadowed the Government's national security policies. Only a sensible commitment to a staged withdrawal of Australian combat troops from Iraq differentiates Labor's national security policy from the Government's.
On other issues, such as the need to maintain defence spending at current levels and the importance and centrality of the US alliance in Australian defence thinking, Labor is as one with the Government.
Those who despair at the Howard Government's willingness to exploit or exaggerate the threat of terrorism for political gain, and the way it has encouraged the security agencies to use the new terrorism laws (with disastrous consequences in the case of Dr Mohamed Haneef and Izhar ul-Haque), should not expect a future Labor government to dismantle or overhaul them.
Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd has promised that, if elected, he would establish a department of homeland security as part of an overhaul of national security policy a hardly reassuring outcome given the dismal record of America's homeland security apparatus.