In what appears to be an increasingly dangerous world, all of us want to feel safe. That fear of the outside has given successive Australian governments the political space to pass an extraordinary suite of laws that together create a culture of surveillance and secrecy that now runs through every level of administration, whether federal, state or local.

As a foreign correspondent, I’ve worked in a whole host of regimes – none as reflexively secretive as Australia seems to be.Credit: Marija

As a foreign correspondent, I’ve worked in a whole host of regimes – some pretty horrible authoritarian ones – and I was wrongfully imprisoned in Egypt for 400 days. I’ve also worked in countries that we’d consider to be open liberal democracies. And I haven’t come across anywhere as reflexively secretive as Australia seems to be.

September 11, of course, was the moment everything changed. Before 9/11, Australia had just one statute on all of its books that actually mentioned terrorism and that was in the Northern Territory. But after 9/11, we became world champions of national security legislation. To date, we have close to 100 separate national security laws, more than any other country on Earth.

As far back as 2011, legal academic George Williams said these powers and sanctions, once thought to lie........

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