Perth is one of the most isolated cities on Earth, in a country separated from its neighbours by sea. Large parts of the coastline are bordered by coral reefs and if you want to reach the population centres, you need to sail down to them (excluding Darwin, which is at the top). Essentially what I'm getting at is that Australia is a pretty safe place. So safe that people here forget how lucky they are.

If you pick up one of the mainstream papers here, you'll see that the most we have to worry about is 78 asylum seekers rescued from a leaky boat. Yet the media, government and the people panic about what to do with them.

Back to isolated Perth – we have precisely one daily news paper and it's a heavily biased, pro police/law and order, fear mongering rightwing rag. Don't underestimate how much of an effect this newspaper has had on the people of Perth. Elections are heavily influenced by the stance the paper takes on a given issue. If it had some competition, our civil liberties might be slightly more intact.

Since we don't have any conventional, readily identifiable threats, we trump up the little things like kids walking around at night, noisy car exhausts (poor old people can't sleep) and some bizarre need for metal detectors at our major train stations. To quote a line from Dune “Fear is the mind-killer.”

The solution? A second daily newspaper and waiting for the Baby Boomers to cede power.

Sean makes a valid point, but mobilising an opposition would appear to be a very difficult thing to do. The situation in the UK and the US is one or two orders of magnitude worse and yet where is the large scale public opposition? I would arge that if riots fail to materialise, only a generational shift will provide the change in thinking we so sorely need.