Australia prepares citizens for terror attack

[RspctFrmCalgary]

Australia prepares citizens for terror attack
Thursday, February 6, 2003 Posted: 10:54 PM EST (0354 GMT)


The campaign has been greeted with scorn and approval


CANBERRA, Australia (AP) -- Food and water for three days, sunscreen, a flashlight, fire extinguisher, battery-powered radio, a repair kit for the car -- and playing cards to keep the family amused.

Sound like a shopping list for a camping trip? It's actually a list of supplies the Australian government is advising citizens to stockpile as part of a terrorism survival kit. The advice comes in anti-terror packets mailed this week to every home in Australia.

The packets include a refrigerator magnet with the number of a 24-hour national anti-terror hot line.

A booklet, "Let's look out for Australia," gives advice on first aid, how to react in a crisis and tips on spotting possible signs of terrorist activity -- including looking out for unusual videotaping or picture-taking of public buildings, suspicious vehicles, and unusual behaviors or lifestyles.

"While planning an attack, terrorists may lead lives that appear unusual or suspicious," it says.

The mailing is the second stage of a government television, radio and newspaper campaign that began in December and advises people to be "alert but not alarmed" about terrorism.

It follows a government warning last November that it had received credible information of a possible terrorist attack in Australia in coming months.

Australia was already on heightened alert after the October 12 bombings on the Indonesian island of Bali, which killed 88 Australians and more than 100 others.

Striking a balance
Prime Minister John Howard wrote in a letter in the mailing that the Australian public is instrumental in the nation's ability to respond to terrorist threats.

"We have to take the necessary steps to protect ourselves, but in doing so, we also need to strike the right balance between sensible precaution and unnecessary alarm," he wrote.

The campaign has been greeted with both scorn and approval by the public.

Wayne Shanks, 44, a self-employed carpenter, said terrorism was a real threat and the anti-terror packet was a "good idea." "It's a big country. It's good if everyone can keep an eye out," he said.

Waste of money?
But others decried the packets as a waste of taxpayers' money.

The mayor of Australia's third-largest city, Brisbane, Jim Soorley, urged people to write "return to sender" on the packets and send them back.

Lance Cavanagh, a 54-year-old small businessman, said the packets were likely to cause unnecessary alarm.

"It's overkill. It's like all of a sudden you have to be looking for terrorists under your bed," he said.

Opposition parties have accused Howard of using the mailings to boost his popularity and to justify his hard-line stance against Iraq.

Howard's conservative government is a stalwart supporter of Washington's tough stance on Baghdad and among the few U.S. allies to have sent troops in preparation for an attack on Iraq.

Public opinion in Australia is overwhelmingly against war, as are opposition parties, who claim Howard is trying to link Iraq with terrorism.

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Interesting .... any comments or opinions Aussie friends?

[lutan1]

From a funny point of view- our Opposition Leader said in a Parliament sitting the other day, that while Howard sends our elite SAS troops over to Iraq, we are left to defend the country with fridge magnets!

From a first responder point of view- we have recieved NOTHING!
I am so envious of your FEMA grants, etc, yet the first responder from any and ALL agencies is left with no serious training, no equipment and absolutely NO BLOODY IDEA!!!

[stillPSFB]

umm Terrorist Attacks - first anyone's bothered to tell us firefighters about it! We've been told absolutely nothing about it as firefighters, had absolutley zero additional training in what to look for as being possible indicators of an incident being terrorist related, nothing about how to handle terrorist type incidents, not a word, Nothing. When there was a rash(over 1000 incidents) of white powder/Anthrax hoaxes happening just after Sept.11 here in Victoria one of our officers rang headquaters to try to get a MSDS or similar information on Anthrax - their first question was "how do you spell that?" Turns out that they had no information on any of their systems anyway.

Considering that my station is first due at a facility that if a terrorist chose to place a kilogram of explosive there when the wind was blowing in the right direction he'd wipe out most of the population of Australia's second largest city, I would have thought that someone would have thought it wise to give us a little bit of additional training - anything would be better than nothing. Like everything else in my department though, it will take an incident that goes wrong to obtain the funding to fix a problem that we all know about Unfortunately I think that management think that volunteers are often unaware of the potential problems, and if they don't tell us about the potential problem then we won't be telling them that we don't have the equipment and training to respond to that problem, and so we'll stay happy little blissfully ignorant firefighters

[lutan1]

it will take an incident that goes wrong to obtain the funding to fix a problem that we all know about

Well said, and unfortunately too true....

[RspctFrmCalgary]

Unbelievable! The citizens are better informed and better prepared to deal with a terrorist attack than the firefighters!

Nice to see it isn't just my country that has a f'd up government.

[stillPSFB]

Trouble is if we get a terrorist job, someone from the public will come up to us and say that they are an expert, and compared to us they probably will be.

I'm peeved because I didn't get a fridge magnet, so I've got nothing to defend myself with

[FlyingKiwi]

All we have ever got is a one page letter saying 1% house hold amonia and 99% water will kill anthrax the virus. and that was about 3 months after 9/11.

Fridge magnets, survival kits. The bloody Greenies down here have swapped hugging trees for hugging terrorists.

It is pathetic.