I live in a very pleasant location on the north east coast of Queensland, an hour’s drive from Cairns. I’m fortunate. It’s a beautiful part of the world.

There’s only one place close to city-size around here (that’s Cairns), but there’s plenty of reef and rainforest, great beaches and lots of nice things to do.

Not surprisingly, plenty of visitors come every year to Cairns and the surrounding region. Tourism is big business – and while it’s going through a relatively depressed period at present Cairns is always busy.

Pacific Islands Forum

This week – starting from today (Tuesday 4th August 2009) – Cairns will be busier than usual. It’s the venue for this year’s Pacific Islands Forum. As well as politicians, their entourages, NGOs and media, there will doubtless be lots of security, police and ‘secret police’. The Pacific Islands Forum is not quite the G-20, but it’s the closest Cairns is likely to get for a while.

I shall NOT be visiting Cairns during the week, unless under duress or in dire emergency. Meeting up with some of the social justice and environmental NGOs – which include Friends of the Earth, Oxfam and Greenpeace – would be interesting. I strongly support what these fine people are trying to achieve at this Forum. Good luck to them! But I’d rather not push my own luck. I think I’ll leave a respectable distance between myself and the melee in Cairns.

Like the Fool on the Hill in the famous Beatles’ song – I’ve been watching the world spinning round, using the eyes in my head much-enhanced by the modern Internet. I’ve been listening to ‘Terror Chatterers’ on the mass media. I don’t like what I’m hearing…

ASIO's new HQ in Canberra - an artists impression: a cool new hangout for Australia's growing army of spooks and Terror Experts

I should make it clear that I am not, myself, a “Terror Expert‘. Nor am I a ‘Terror Chatterer‘ – a talking head whose gives expert opinion about Terror to a Terrified public via the Terror-obsessed mass media. That’s highly-paid, highly-skilled work.

I am merely a humble Terror Watcher or Terror Listener. It’s like the difference between a voyeur and porn-star. I try to stay far away from any of these absurd and exotic people – as far away as possible. I merely aim to follow what on earth is going on in the world by piecing together the increasingly bizarre and improbable official saga of the ‘War on Terror‘, as narrated by genuine Terror Experts and Terror Chatterers.

Last week, David Irvine, the recently-appointed head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) gave an exclusive interview to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Here’s an extract from the ABC report:

The new head of ASIO, David Irvine, has broken his silence after four months in the job, warning the recent bombings in Jakarta show that Australians are at risk overseas and at home.

He says Australia’s domestic spy agency remains focused on countering terrorism and that in the wake of the recent bombings Australia and Indonesia continue to cooperate closely.

But he also says that cyber-espionage is an emerging threat that will require extra effort from his agents.

David Irvine has been the keeper of some of Australia’s darkest secrets for more than a decade.

He was ambassador in Papua New Guinea, then Ambassador to China before he was appointed to head the highly secretive foreign spy service ASIS in 2003.

“I was able to happily languish for six years with what I call the very bottom of the laundry basket in Canberra,” he said.

Now that he is the head of the domestic spy agency, ASIO, Mr Irvine is venturing back out into the open. If that’s what you can call a speech to the Institute of Professional Intelligence Officers in Canberra.

“It is a new experience for me or at least a renewed experience to me to actually talk to a public audience,” he said.

He says the agency he started running at the end of March is still focused on counter-terrorism, and as the recent attack in Jakarta showed the risks to Australians remains real.

“I can put it no more starkly than to say that the potential continues for serious threats to Australia, Australians abroad and at home,” he said.

According to federal Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, Australian authorities checked after the bombings to ensure no one in Australia was inspired to make a copycat attack.

“The Government has a duty of care and the agencies recognise that they have a duty of care to protect Australians and in so far as there is a foreseeable risk doing what they can to ensure the prospect of that risk occurring is minimised,” Mr McClelland said.

“Obviously they will look at a number of factors including events that have occurred overseas, in particular the recent Jakarta bombings.”

New powers

Mr McClelland says because an attack has not happened yet here, Australians may be becoming a little too comfortable and relaxed.

“I do think there is a danger of complacency and I do see evidence of complacency,” he said.

He says he is about to unveil a raft of changes to Australia’s counter-terrorism laws, including one targeting those who radicalise people, then try to tip them over the edge into launching an attack based on political views, ethnicity or religion.

When news of this measure first broke, it caused a stir with some defence lawyers arguing that the laws are already too wide but Mr McClelland says the risk of incitement is real.

“The reality is the Government isn’t contemplating this law out of a vacuum. We are contemplating it in light of knowledge that we have,” he said.

Muslim community activists and defence lawyers say this sort of legislation has often been accompanied by heightened debate about Islam and vilification of Muslims as ASIO reaches out into the community to make various levels of contact.

David Irvine: Head of ASIO. Is he Australia's No 1 Terror Guru?

Now ASIO Head Irvine must surely be close to the top of the tree in Australia when it comes to Terror-Savvy. This man – formerly head of Australia’s overseas spooks agency (ASIS) and now the boss of ASIO itself – is the nearest thing to Terror Guru that we have in this country. So if Mr Irvine takes time off from his busy schedule to warn us all of more Terror on the way – and there’s yet more anti-Terror Legislation in the wings waiting for a surge of Terrorized popular sentiment to carry it over the line in Parliament (again) – a hill-dwelling fool like me gets nervous.

I ask questions such as: what does Mr Irvine know that he’s not telling the rest of us? After all, he can’t be saying everything he knows. Top spooks never do that. It’s their job to be economical with the truth (in fact, truth is a concept that many of them have probably forgotten about altogether).

So why is Mr Irvine so worried about more Terror? Why does he think it might happen here in Australia. Why so soon?

In Part Two of this article, which I plan to post very soon, I’ll explain a little more about why I’m currently Too Terrified to go into town this week.

Stay tuned…