Terrorist attacks occur throughout Australia, each of them shocking.
Groups of extremists who have come to Australia as migrants sneak out of the country that has given them shelter, planning to wage terror overseas. All are killed in battle, imprisoned or executed.
![Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam (left) is welcomed by Yugoslav premier Dzemal Bijedic in Belgrade on January 10, ...](http://web.archive.org./web/20170612070959im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/w/n/c/1/u/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gwn9o1.png/1497021065282.jpg)
An Australian prime minister rises in parliament and declares that the nation's immigrants: "have proved themselves hard-working and popular and have contributed much to the economic, social and cultural development of Australia. We value their presence."
But he adds: "It is therefore unfortunate that a minority of these migrants, enjoying the rights we offer for the free expression of views, have sought to aggravate old suspicions and hatreds by importing the methods of terrorism to this country. My government is determined to stamp out this terrorism."
![The scene of the Hilton Hotel bombing on George Street, Sydney.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170612070959im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/o/i/r/z/d/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gwn9o1.png/1497021065282.jpg)
It sounds familiar, but it happened almost half a century ago.
The prime minister was Gough Whitlam and it was March, 1973. The terrorist attacks – at least 12 bombings of diplomatic, business and private residences – had occurred through the 1960s and the early 1970s.
The immigrant terrorists who had filtered back to the country of their birth – then known as Yugoslavia – planning, apparently, to kill foreign tourists to cause international outrage, had done so in 1963 and 1972. They had trained in secret camps in Australia.
Whitlam's alarming speech to parliament was during his official welcome to the prime minister of Yugoslavia, Dzemal Bijedic, who was undertaking a state visit to Australia.
![Emergency crews at the scene of the Sydney Hilton bombing in 1978.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170612070959im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/1/2/8/k/0/4/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gwn9o1.png/1497021065282.jpg)
I was a young journalist then, and followed Bijedic's motorcade from the Canberra airport into the city.
It is hard now to convey the level of trepidation of the time. There had been threats that terrorists planned to assassinate both Bijedic and Whitlam.
Police lined the route from the airport, one every 100 metres.
Snipers perched on rooftops and helicopters fluttered, armed police hanging from their open doors.
Cars had been stopped by police all around Canberra for days. Drivers were forced to open the boot lids of their vehicles with the police at a safe distance lest booby traps set off explosives. Not far from parliament house I witnessed police remove from a car what they said was gelignite.
Only a few days previously the terrorism scare had caused what remains one of the greatest sensations in Australian political history.
The new Attorney-General, Lionel Murphy, had used Commonwealth Police to raid the headquarters of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), convinced the nation's spies had been hiding what they knew about the terrorists.
It turned out that ASIO, obsessed with shadowing left-wing and anti-Vietnam War activists, had almost no intelligence about the brand of terrorists that so worried the Whitlam Government.
Those causing the fear were not today's malignant off-shoots of jihad, however.
They were associated with a fascist group known as the Ustasha, Croatian zealots who had brought their network to Australia through post-war migrant reception centres.
Portraying themselves as freedom fighters, they fantasised about overthrowing the Yugoslavian communist regime of Marshall Joseph Tito, and to settle ancient scores with Serbs.
The depth of the Balkan hatreds would later shock the world when the break-up of Yugoslavia became a decade-long nightmare of ethnic cleansing, rape and crimes against humanity by a bewildering array of combatants.
As the western world, including Australia, reels before the latest terror assaults, we might remind ourselves that terror is not new, even if the indiscriminate nature of the attacks by the current brand of Islamist killers is so horrifying.
Australia itself since the events of the early 1970s has seen terrorist behaviour by groups as diverse as those opposed to the Family Court, who killed a judge and a judge's wife; Palestinian terrorists who plotted to kill Prime Minister Bob Hawke before Israeli forces killed the would-be assassin; Armenian activists who claimed responsibility for killing the Turkish consul and his security attache in Sydney; plus anti-abortionists and violent groups from both the far right and the far left.
Until the most recent killings and foiled plots involving Islamist extremists, the most notorious terrorist event in Australia was the 1978 bombing outside the Hilton Hotel where prime minister Malcolm Fraser and 12 foreign leaders were staying during the Commonwealth Heads of Regional Governments meeting.
Two garbage collectors and a police officer were killed and 11 people were injured. Two members of the Hindu cult the Ananda Marga were jailed for the bombing, although one was later acquitted, and controversy continues about who was responsible.
It could be argued the Hilton bombing was Australia's second-worst case of terrorism, at least by body count. In 1915 two former camel drivers killed four men and wounded seven before being killed themselves in the so-called Battle of Broken Hill.
One of the men left a note saying he was acting in support of the Ottoman Sultan and "I must kill you and give my life for my faith, Allahu Akbar."
None of this is to detract from the revulsion and shock Australians are currently feeling about those who would use the name of Mohammed to terrorise and kill.
Nothing can comfort the families of those who have been murdered, either.
But it is surely worth reflecting that Australia and its rule of law have managed to survive assaults by terrorists of all shades over many decades, whatever the steps and missteps of its authorities.