Those who worked in Sydney during APEC week may, like me, have been bemused at the level of security created to keep the many high profile international bureaucrats safe from harm. After a wander down near Circular Quay I returned to the office for a rant on the changing face of our society.
If the President of the United States was coming to town when I was at school I have no doubt that my classmates, and many other school children, would have travelled into town for an excursion to wave at the most powerful man in the world as he sped past in his motorcade. There would probably have been a school band playing terrible music somewhere and the school captains of an elite public or private school may have even been invited to attend a special ceremony to meet “the Pres”.
But not this time. My children were as unaware of what was happening as the rest of us. The only invitation we were presented with was to take a day off and get the hell out of the city.
Yes, the world’s changed: the US was rocked by September 11, and terrorism is an ongoing threat. But is the answer to pretty much shut down an entire city? Certainly security is of major importance in any large-scale event of this magnitude, but are we going too far?
It was with great humour, therefore, when members of ABC television’s Chaser team got into the so-called “exclusion zone” simply by turning up with a couple of limousines and a few serious-looking security personnel running alongside them.
This caused a furore among many people, particularly on talkback radio, which is mostly popular with an older demographic. Many Generation X and Y people on the other hand, thought the whole thing was a bit of a laugh.
The thing about Australia is that we like a good joke, and we like a laugh; especially at ourselves. It’s one of the ways that we differentiate ourselves from the rest of the world, and it will be a sorry time indeed when we forget that larrikinism is predominantly an Australian phenomenon.
The disappointment would have been if the Chaser team had not tried anything during APEC. Then it would have been obvious to me that we really are in a sad state of affairs.
Despite the Chaser stunt we apparently still pulled off the “best APEC ever”. But of course we did. We’re Australians and we shouldn’t expect anything less.
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