The Risk of Terrorism in Australia - Assignment Example

The Risk of Terrorism in Australia Question No. 1 My topic of choice is ‘the risk of terrorism in Australia.’ The choice of terrorism as a topic is underpinned by a personal desire to explore and analyse the extent of the reality of terrorism in Australian. Since 9/11, the threat of terrorism has become the sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of civilised nations, including Australia. The image of huge planes charging into Manhattan skyscrapers setting them and ultimately razing them to the ground will forever be etched in the minds of people around the world. However, the subsequent ‘war on terror’ – a global military campaign that sought to eliminate terrorist organisations - has earned a lot of criticisms for its tendencies to violate due process. Recently, the Abbot government has taken a harsher stance against terrorism. It has raised its terrorism alert, the highest level in decades (Stringer 2014). Abbot’s Liberal-National Collation Party has since passed an amendment to the National Security Legislation, and has announced a set of upcoming legislations that will broaden the powers of the government against suspected terrorists and terrorist activities years. The fight against terrorism has impacted not only on terrorists, but also on ordinary citizens. These existing and proposed laws allow the government to infringe upon civilian citizens’ privacy by freely accessing computer networks and other measures that infringe on personal liberties. Even journalists can no longer be protected by the freedom of speech defense as they can be sentenced to years of imprisonment for divulging security operations considered as ‘special’ (The Economist 2014). The sanctity of democratic institutions and civil liberties, which are the social issues underpinning this research, hang in the balance as a result. It is, therefore, imperative to understand whether the actions of the government, taken in the name of national security and public safety, are justified. Question No. 2 The research question for this research paper is the following: To what extent is the risk of terrorism in Australia real? Is the government’s response to such threat reasonably calibrated to meet it? Or is the government overdoing or under- responding to such threat? The above-cited research question/s makes several assumptions. First, it assumes that there is a threat of terrorism presently existing in Australia, but its magnitude is not clear. Second, it also assumes that the government has the right to respond to such risk, but such response must be reasonable and must not unnecessarily infringe on personal liberties. Question No. 3 This research is underpinned by the epistemological position that objective knowledge exists and can be accessed through empirical studies. Thus, the extent of the risk of terrorism in Australia is ascertainable through empirical data. In line with this position, this research will take an approach that combines positivism and interpretivism in that it will seek both to describe data proving evidence of terrorism in the Australian context and analyse the extent of their potential risk to Australian society. Specifically, the theoretical framework of this research is that the spectre of terrorism, and not the actual risk itself, is responsible for creating panic compelling the government to take actions that are not in accord with reality. Question No. 4 No serious potential ethical problem is foreseeable in this research since data will be culled from government and private research websites. The only possible ethical issue that is foreseeable is plagiarism or the failure to cite the source of ideas and data. This ethical issue will be avoided at all costs in this research. There is also an opinion that a ‘once-and-for-al’ consent should not be the prevailing principle in research and that consent should also be obtained even in the case of further use of qualitative data (Grinyer 2009). This is, however, impractical in the present situation because of the nature of the research and the situation of the researcher. Question No. 5 Methodology/Research Design The importance of abiding by a scientific methodology in research cannot be disputed. Such type of methodology is important for the paper’s legitimacy and credibility. This is the reason why this research will be largely grounded on and dependent on empirical data. Thus, as much as possible, the evidence required in proving, or disproving, the existence and magnitude of terrorism threat or risk in Australia will be grounded on empirical data to the extent that such data are available. Such empirical data will dominate all aspects of the research design – which is defined as the strategy that a researcher uses to integrate all the various aspects of the research topic to generate a logical and consistent flow of ideas in the research. For this research, the chief strategy is a systematic review under the broad methodology of qualitative method. Since this research is underpinned by the principle that the truth exists and such truth need not necessarily align with popular perceptions, declarations and common beliefs, this research will conduct a search on relevant government and private databases. The purpose of this strategy is to ferret out the fundamental truth, stripped of hyping, panic and sensationalism often accompanying media presentation. The purpose of this search is to gather data pointing to terrorist activities conducted within Australia or against Australian citizens within and without Australia, the magnitude of these activities, if any, their impact or extent of harm caused to the public. The search will also try to gather information on the number of terrorist organisations operating in the country, their capabilities and the size of their respective networks. Finally, the research will also enumerate in detail the policies, legislations and other measure undertaken by the government to respond, anticipate and stop terrorists and terrorist activities, and the impact of such actions and measures on the civilian populace. Question No. 6 To be able to undertake a meaningful and relevant data collection, the terms ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist activities’ must be clearly defined. The purpose of this is to limit the scope of the research to only relevant data. Data required to complete the research can be culled from various national and international agencies. They are available in the databases of the US Department of State, which lists foreign terrorist organisations, the National Counterterrorism Center of the US, the Australian National Security, the United Nations, amongst others. The identified organisations will then be individually researched for their characteristics, operations, size and capabilities, using various databases, national or international, online newspaper accounts, reports of various government and private research agencies, and journals and books with historical accounts of these organisations. Data regarding terrorist activities within the Australian context will be collected primarily using newspaper archive databases. Government policies, legislations and other measures geared to prevent, stop and detect terrorism and terrorist activities will entail a search into various databases, such as ComLaw, which has a complete listing of Commonwealth legislations, the National Library of Australia database, the Australian Legal Information Institute, which has a complete list of legislations, including in the states of NSW, ACT, Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia. Of special mention is the Criminal Code Act of 1995, the recent amendments of the National Security Act and the bills now pending in the Parliament with focus on counterterrorism and minimising incidents of terrorism. The research will also delve into the Australian counter-terrorism measures and the master plan that are in place. These plans simultaneously exist on various levels: in the Commonwealth level, which can be researched in the National Security website, and; in the state level, the data of which can be gathered in the respective state government websites. Question No. 7 Research does not end with the completion of data collection. The data collected must be made sense of (Kumar 2002). After all the aforecited data on terrorists, terrorist activities, terrorist organisations, government counterterrorism legislations, policies and measures are collected, all of these data must be analysed. The proposed method for this phase is the use of statistical analysis, specifically a combination of descriptive and analytical statistical methods. In the descriptive statistical method, the data collected, usually presented in graphs and tables, is described to give characteristics and features to a variable. Thus, the number of terrorist incidents and the number of terrorist organisations operating in Australia can first be subjected to descriptive statistical analysis by describing their frequency, magnitude, targeted locations, and specific terrorist group perpetrators. The same thing can be done to the list of terrorist organisations operating in Australia describing their size, places of operation, resources, capabilities, reach and networks. The described data are then used to provide foundation for the succeeding analysis of the researched data. In analytical statistical method, the data collected are interpreted. Thus, the data collected on terrorist activities within Australia in the past decade to the present are given interpretation, and subjected to analysis and evaluation. Thus, a higher frequency of terrorist attacks through the years taking into consideration their reach and impact, may be interpreted as posing a higher and realistic threat of an escalating terrorist attacks in the very near future. However, not all components of the collected data can be subjected to statistical analysis. Statistical analysis can only be used in data collected on the number of terrorist activities occurring and the number of terrorist organisations operating in Australia. Other data such as magnitude and impact of terrorist attacks, government counterterrorism policies, measures and legislations can only be subjected to content analysis. These data can be processed through such tools as content analysis, narrative analysis, theme identification, and similar methods. Question No. 8 Wright-Neville, D 2005, ‘Fear and loathing: Australia and counter-terrorism,’ Real Instituto El Cano. Bull, M & Craig, M 2006, ‘The Problem of Terrorism: Balancing risk between state and civil responsibilities,’ Current Issues in Criminal Justice, vol. 18, no. 2. Crowley, M 2011, ‘A poisoned apple? The use of secret evidence and secret hearings to combat terrorism in Australia,’ Australian Counter Terrorism Conference. Howie, L 2005, ‘There is nothing to fear but fear itself (and terrorists): Public perception, terrorism and the workplace,’ Paper presented to the Social Change in the 21st Century Conference Centre for Social Change Research Queensland University of Technology. Howie L 2006, ‘Terrorism as Opiniotainment: Perceptions Warriors and the Public Battlefield,’ Australian Information Warfare and Security Conference Security Research Institute Conferences. Mullins, S 2011, ‘Islamist terrorism and Australia: an empirical examination of the "home- grown" threat,’ Terrorism and Political Violence, pp. 254-285. Stevens, G, Agho, K, Taylor, M, Jones, A, Jacobs, J, Barr, M and Raphael, B, 2011, ‘Alert but less alarmed: a pooled analysis of terrorism threat perception in Australia,’ Public Health, vol. 11, p. 797. References Grinyer, A 2009, ‘The ethics of the secondary analysis and further use of qualitative data,’ Kumar, A 2002, Research Methodology in Social Science, Sarup & Sons. Stringer, D 2014, ‘Security doubled at Australia sport final on terror risk,’ Bloomberg News, 27 September 2014, viewed on 15 October 2014, Bloomberg Database. The Economist 2014, ‘Australia and terrorism: Pushing the limits,’ Banyan Asia, The Economist, 15 October 2014, viewed 16 October 2014, The Economist Database. Read More