Compared to other risks, we have little to fear from terrorism. In the last two decades only three people in Australia have died from terrorism. But there is a ‘vividness’ bias in terrorism because it stands out in our minds. Importantly, a lot of politicians, businesses, stand to gain from exaggerating the terrorist threat. It is also easy news for our media.
The Domestic Violence Death Review Team in NSW established by the Coroners Court has given us some chilling information that shows that domestic violence is a much more serious threat than terrorism.
According to an ANU poll, more than half of Australian adults are concerned that we will be targets for terrorism.. But Greg Austin in The Conversation has pointed out that ‘terrorist attacks in Australia have claimed the lives of only three people in the last decade’. ‘Australians have little to fear from terrorism at home.
Compare the terrorist risk to other risks in our lives.
- In the two years 2014 and 2015, more than 318 people, mainly women, died from domestic violence in Australia. We spend billions to counter terrorism, but we spend a pittance on protecting women and children in the home.
- Australia’s daily alcohol toll is 15 deaths and 430 hospitalisations. But blaming Muslim extremists is much easier than taking on the powerful alcohol lobby.
- As Bernard Keane in Crikey has pointed out during 2003-12, there were 2,617 homicides, 190 deaths from accidental gun discharges, 137 rural workers and farmers died from falling off vehicles, 206 died from electrocution and 1,700 indigenous people died from diabetes.
In ‘The security threat from climate change’ in this blog, Christian Downie described the growing threats to food security, water security, and energy supply as a result of climate change. In 2015 the Pentagon warned that ‘climate change is an urgent and growing threat to our national security’.
But that warning about climate change is drowned out by the incessant drum beat of terrorism where we keep eroding our liberties and spending enormous amounts of money when the probability of attack is very low compared with other threats.
The Australian Climate Institute estimates that more than 1,000 Australians die each year due to higher temperatures which are very likely caused by global warming. The Climate Council describes rising temperatures as a ‘silent killer’. In The Conversation on May 5, 2015, Kerstin Zander and others estimated that heat stress costs Australia $A6.9 billion per annum in lost productivity.
But let us return to the new information supplied by the Domestic Violence Death Review Team. This information is for NSW only and would represent only about 40% of national domestic violence. The Team found that from July 2000 to June 2014 in NSW:
- there were 1132 homicides resulting in the deaths of 748 males and 383 females
- 61% of homicides with a female victim were domestic violence related.
- 79% of intimate partner homicides were women.
- women killed by an intimate partner ranged from 15-80 years of age.
- 61 % of domestic violence abusers had abused prior intimate partners.
- for the intimate partner homicides there were at least 109 child survivors of homicide.
- in 16% of cases a child was present during the fatal assault.
- 55% of child homicide victims were aged less than 4 years.
- 42% of children were killed by their biological father and 26 % were killed by their biological mother acting alone.
And we are told that only about 1 in 10 of domestic violence episodes is reported.
Over all this is staggering .But it is terrorism that injures and kills so few that gets our attention
There are several reasons why we are more worried about terrorsm than domestic violence
One reason is what psychologists describe as the ‘vividness effect’. Debra Schroder describes it this way.
Events that stand out in our minds have more influence on our beliefs about the world than statistics and graphs. Risk assessment provides some good examples. Some people are terrified to fly, but think nothing of crawling into a car and driving an equal distance. This, despite the fact that flying is much safer. But, vivid reports of one large airplane crash stand out in our minds more than the 3 to 4 people killed per car crash which actually adds up to more people mile for mile. Anecdotes also draw on the power of the vividness effect. For example, despite the fact that research has been unable to link vaccines and autism, vivid anecdotes continue to sway the beliefs of many in the general public that there is such a connection.
Terrorists, like insurance salespeople, know this vividness bias well and capitalize on it. For vividness effect they attack trains, train stations airlines and crowded areas. By its very nature domestic violence is invariably hidden at least in the first instance.
Another reason why there is such a strong interest in anti terrorism is that powerful and influential vested interests have sprung up that depend for profits, funding and employment in heightening the terrorist threat. Even universities are scrambling to join this booming industry. Just think of the mountains of nail clippers the new and expensive security machines have been able to detect at airports. Far more importantly, the vast military/corporate/intelligence communities in the US and their satellites in Australia benefit from heightening the terrorist threat and the vast military expenditures that flow from it.
Our intelligence agencies, ASIO, ASIS and others have greatly increased funding and powers through the exaggerated terrorism threats.
Another reason for the exaggeration of the terrorist threat is that some Australian governments see fear as a very potent and partisan political opportunity.. Politicians like John Howard and his successors owe a great deal to the heightened terrorist threat. The more we can be alarmed the greater they see the political benefit.
Yet John Howard, by involving us in Iraq and the subsequent deaths and disaster in the Middle East, is more responsible for the terrorism in Australia than any other person in this country. Terrorism is over here because our troops are over there. Millions of Muslim people, including a lot of hot-heads, are appalled at the suffering we and our allies have inflicted on Muslim lands. If there is one thing we could do to reduce terrorism in Australia, it would be for us to get our troops out of the Middle East as quickly as possible. But our government will not admit the original Iraqi invasion mistake and does not want to forego the political bonus it sees from the terrorism threat.
In short, the terrorist threat is grossly exaggerated. That is not to say it must not be addressed. But we have the whole issue out of proportion. There are very powerful vested interests that rely on exaggerating the threat – governments, politicians, business, intelligence agencies, police, think-tanks and even our universities.
The worst and most insidious domestic threat we face is domestic violence . But terrorism is good for politicians, government agencies, business and the media..
John Menadue is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Pearls and Irritations. He was formerly Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.
Comments
6 responses to “JOHN MENADUE. Domestic violence, not terrorism, is the big killer in Australia- A REOST from November 10 2017”
The vividness effect has taken hold. It’s good to be able to out a label on the shameless scaremongering that enables the rich and powerful to continue their subjugation of the great unwashed.
Good to see this piece. Domestic violence is, of course, terror. It is a crime arising out of a, paradoxically, powerless habit to control. The personal is political: we sometimes forget that feminist mantra. We forget, too, The Golden Rule/Mean, perhaps.
Keeping this issue before the public is crucial to condemning and ending it. Forty years ago I worked with Anne Deveson on research within the Royal Commission on Human Relationships,(‘RCHR’) to investigate and analyse family violence in many forms – and make recommendations for policies to combat it.
You are right to talk about the Attention-getting aspects of the struggle to free ourselves from this pathology. The RCHR’s remarkable efforts to produce work under pressure from budget rationalists, the subsequent overwhelming of it by Dismissal and post- politics, (see Jenny Hocking’s work) the passage of time, and media ‘values’ – meant that a significant body of policy-informing material was , in effect, lost or disregarded – then, of course the elements of it have been repeated in review after review and commissions and conferences, – all of which seem to have met similar reception: neglect. Currently, Dr Katie Wright & colleagues at LaTrobe University are conducting research into this forgotten Royal Commission – attention to which might have saved any number of lives, any amount of suffering – in the interim. It is difficult to draw attention of ‘authorities’ (powerful persons & officials) to this issue; Police avoid it ‘tho’ that might be changing, media like to sensationalize it (no blood/crime/scandal = ‘not sexy’) and there is a yawning gulf between service-delivery and the comfortable seats of the ‘policy-makers’ at a distance from the action.
It is often said that the RC – clergy -child abuse scandal in the USA was exposed by The Boston Globe – which is true, it was; but a key part of the Spotlight story is that it was NOT-exposed for so many years, as a result of media news-values-publishing decisions. It was a decision by the new, unmarried, Jewish ‘outsider’ editor which led The Globe to its duty, and to fair recognition of the long, enduring, difficult work done by Mitchell Garabidian obo ‘victims’. A Hebrew journalist & an Armenian lawyer demanding scrutiny of : Policy & Practice. Not the Catholic Church; and not their municipal or any other authorities. That’s why we must keep talking about it.
The so called threat of terrorist attacks in Australia can be directly related to Australia’s participation in the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ and it’s continuing variations. If our military adventures, i.e. where there is no direct threat to Australia, were curtailed and we confined our interests to our own region, the likelihood of terrorism as an issue would become even more insignificant.
We could even dismantle the new Parliament House $127 million fence, designed to protect our politicians from the hordes of potential terrorists, but which only serves to separate the people from those who are supposed to represent them. My estimation of the fence’s cost benefit ratio requires a specific foil rate of several hundred incidents over the next 5 years, to justify this ridiculous expense.
Like our treatment of asylum seekers and our treatment of indigenous Australians, our repose to domestic violence is part of our growing national shame not helped by the nonsense going on in our parliament.
Shortly after embarking on a foolish war in Iraq in 2003, the Howard Government launched a TV campaign against domestic violence, apparently unaware that its war was an assertion of a right to biff people if you don’t like their behaviour.
In September 2003 I wrote to Foreign Minister Downer as follows. He did not reply.
“… I have become increasingly of the view… that it is in the nature of modern war that it tends, more than anything else – certainly it does not tend to ‘victory’ – to import into the righteous invading countries the problems you seek to eliminate by invading… Your assertion of effectiveness of violence in international policy drifts down to validate the use of violence by non-states in international affairs, and increasingly by individuals in national and sub-national affairs, and indeed, I suggest, in domestic life. We are dealing not just with a narrow national security issue but a large ethical dimension.”
http://aplaceof.info/peace/
Glad this is Posted, Dennis.
In the early 2000s I edited some Laws of War/IHL (International Humanitarian Law) materials for ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) – and was appalled anew – even ‘though this information was not new to me, but weapons-development is ever renewing – at the statistics of war which show irrefutably that the most number of victims of war are civilians, and the rationale for wars is the creation of (usually, business) opportunities for invading or intervening forces/persons(nations).
The 12-months between now and Armistice Day 2018 might be the right Time for a Big Push on media/other awareness of the realities (excuse the expression) of war, and the Costs (not least the inevitable Famines which are so often overlooked in nationalist/patriotic histories) and the long-term Effects, and Changes in the very Substance of our polity and culture.