In 2001 I was silent to a truth that I knew would come and would only deepen with Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. Our military, like our police in NSW yesterday, are paid to protect us and it is our duty to protect them from the mental and physical scars they will almost certainly bear. Whether law enforcement, fire, ambulance, nurse or doctor all have chosen careers to safeguard the public too. The public through government owes them. It is a moral contract.

They are now involved in a fight against professional political anarchy and the “perversion of Islam”, as the prime minister of Australia has called it, that has never before been seen in this country. It has terrorised Jews, it has vandalised synagogues and it has killed them en masse.

This is a war. Its chants calling for a globalised “intifada” uprising declared it.

It is a guerrilla war that will require politicians, bureaucrats and their field commanders to send law enforcement into harms way. Yesterday, in Sydney, they did.

Yesterday, Australia experienced first hand this war’s tactics of insurgency incorporating deceit, incitement and street violence seen too long across UK, Europe, Canada and the US particularly in Minneapolis. It has now been imported here.

It is a movement not of protest but of hate, not of politics but of money, not of Palestine but of jihad. It is a movement of evil, not of inclusion.

Such is what comes from the perversion of religion for power and financial reward.

Our sole defence is a thin blue line whose leaders will need to remind that victory goes to those who are the most committed. There is nothing worth committing oneself to in the name of justice than our constitution and the laws from which they derive.

These laws say that it is illegal to incite fear in Australia; that it is illegal to vilify a person or group based on its belief or religion; that Australia is not a theocracy; and that violence is not protest nor is the boycott of commerce and the denial of services such as hospital care.

This fight to enforce our laws will be both physical and psychological for our police and first responders.

The lesson learned from the Global War on Terror is that governments must therefore have in place the capability to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and the funding to ensure that those who go on the front line will feel valued and protected. Too many of our veterans came home carrying the enduring scars of indifference.

The rest is for governments to speak the truth: to disarm the anarchy and the perversion of truth by having the political courage to expose the lies of its slogans and ensure that our children are never exposed to the political indoctrination of hate again.

In 2016 a report titled “Afghanistan Lessons from Australia’s Whole-of-Government Mission” said: “Alliance and coalition management will be demanding and require strong inputs from DFAT and Defence.”

Those whole of government lessons for interconnected resolve apply here.

For now let’s start with a simple principle. Our governments say, “You don’t push the police. You don’t ever threaten first responders unless you want consequences.”

“And you will receive them.”

© 2026 Adam Parker.
Picture credit: By Captain Jesse Platz.“The Australian Other Government Agency Platoon interacts with locals in Tarin Kowt, Uruzgan, 2013”. From the 2016 report. Under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0 Australia licence.