What is to be done with David Hicks? For more than five years, this question bubbled away in Australian political discourse, ever more so as the years passed. Today Hicks sits in a South Australian prison, serving out an abbreviated sentence for supporting terrorism. In a few months he will be a free man; well as free as his notoriety and an unforgiving government will allow. Hicks’s guilty plea and his short sentence (tax evasion can land you a heftier punishment) have taken the heat out of the affair. This is probably a good thing for Hicks, and even better for the embattled Howard government.

But still the questions remain, not least the fraught issue of how to balance security and liberty in the post-9/11 world. As I was writing this review an Indian doctor was being incarcerated in Brisbane, linked (tenuously) to bomb plots in the United Kingdom. John Howard asked us to trust him, his government and the relevant authorities. Kevin Rudd, eyes on the looming poll, submitted eagerly, and the ‘war on terror’ juggernaut rolled on.