And so say all of us ??

"According to the latest Herald Poll, about three-quarters of voters think it is OK to lock up suspected terrorists without charge, put them under house arrest or shackle them with tracking devices. Of six specific policies tested with voters, only the "shoot to kill" plan got the thumbs down, with women showing the strongest opposition. Other elements of the terrorism crackdown have strong support: two-thirds of voters back life imprisonment for funding a terrorist organisation, a fortnight's detention without charge for suspected terrorists and seven years' jail for supporting insurgencies where Australian troops are deployed. Three-quarters support putting suspects under house arrest or fitting them with tracking devices and 57 per cent believe in restrictions on who suspects can meet and where they can work." http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/voters-say-yes-to-terror-australis/2005/10/24/1130006061361.html

That's frightening. It's the kind of support Mussolini got. I don't expect Howard will be handing out brown shirts at the next election, but he is enacting some of the same kinds of laws that got Mussolini elected and kept him in office long past his use-by date.

I do wonder, though, how the poll was framed. For instance, if the question was something like "do you support the police secretly detaining and locking up a terrorist without charge?", there will be a lot of undiscerning and busy folk saying "sure". But if the question was "do you support the police secretly detaining and locking up an innocent person who has not commited any crime without charge?", I would hope if not expect that the results would be entirely different, even though the laws could be used in either case. You can influence the answer by how you frame the question, as has been discussed here before: http://guambatstew.blogspot.com/2005/09/but-what-is-question.html. And you can be reporting and leading public opinion and debate with wholly deceptive statistics in the process.