The morning started badly, and got worse.

I read Herald columnist Paddy McGuinness with disbelief.

“I wonder how many of the relatives and friends of those who died so tragically in Bali on October 12 were at the demonstrations in the city and at Homebush last week? It seems likely that there would be little overlap, since the real feeling of the demonstrators against the victims of Bali is that somehow they deserved what they got, since they were enjoying themselves exploiting the Balinese and thus supporting the world capitalist system.” (Rent-a-mob tarnishes victims of the Bali bombs, smh.)

I’d noticed over the last week that islamic terrorists and protesters against the current economic order and ideology have been converged by police minister Michael Costa and his chief media barracker, The Daily Telegraph. And by the United States – free trade agreements with the American is now a weapon in the war against terror, according to the US government.

But this was something else. Paddy did not say how he knew “the real feeling” of the WTO demonstrators, and this was the first I’d heard of any such suggestion.

Paddy’s words shocked me, but I also felt fear. The climate being generated in Australia – partly by NSW Labor politicians in election mode – is so threatening that it’s getting scary to speak your mind if you don’t agree with the people who rule over us. They’ve got the money, the power, the guns, the batons, and the public space. People who want to dissent against how the powerful and the privileged run the cities and towns, the state, the country, and the world, have nothing but their bodies and the time they can devote to research, lobbying and protest. Yet Paddy said the protesters – demonised as violent to a man and woman in defiance of all the evidence that violent elements are very small – “are more like the gangs of Nazi thugs who roamed the streets of Munich and Berlin as Hitler began his rise to power, or the militias which bully and sometimes murder people minding their own business”.

Still, it was only Paddy. That was something.

I attended the press conference of NSW Premier Bob Carr this morning for his announcement of his new anti-terrorism measures. By the end, I realised I was right to be scared. Mr Carr saw fit to refuse to answer any of my questions and instead to intimidate me with the claim that I “blame the Bali dead” for causing their own deaths. The enemy is me.

“This is not about a demonstration, this is about murder. What happened in Bali was the murder of innocent Australians not people who were guilty because they were celebrating in a 3rd world country as you argued in the Sydney Morning Herald,” Mr Carr said in answer to my question about whether the new terrorism powers extended to people in political protest marches where the police had refused a permit, like last week.

Mr Carr’s allegation is not true. Truth doesn’t seem to matter to the man who wants us to trust his administration with sweeping new police powers over citizens. I am a relatively well known journalist who the Premier of NSW trashed in public. I fear for the fate of the powerless in private.

I’ve read through everything I’ve written about the Bali bombing, and I can’t find anything in which I blame the Bali victims for the bombing. The very idea makes me feel sick.

Mr Carr said he’d dig out the piece that proves his allegation and send it to me, but he hasn’t. He said he’d read the piece in the Herald a month ago, so he might be talking about the first piece I wrote on Bali, calledOctober 13:Bali (WebdiaryOct14). The only time I expressed a firmish view on the motivation for the Bali bombing was in a piece for the Northern Rivers Echo newspaper last month, also published in smh.com.au (smhOct16). I disagreed with the view of some that John Howard’s support for a US strike on Iraq was to blame and said it was more likely to be about our stand on East Timor. The headline, ‘So this is what it’s like on the other side’, took on a new meaning after my experience today. I’ve republished the two pieces below.

I’ve calmed down a lot since the shock of Mr Carr’s allegations but am still too upset to analysis his motives, so I thought I’d put up what he said at the press conference and in a radio interview straight after and ask what you think. The press conference video can be accessed in the right hand column of Webdiary.

***

Bob Carr press conference, Parliament House, midday, October 19

…

Bob Carr: I don’t want to have this debate after a terrorist attack. I don’t want to have a debate about necessary police powers after there has been more people bereaved.

Ben (ABC): Have there been cases where federal agents have picked up people who have attended lectures by Indonesian –

Bob: Well Ben, can I just say this to you? J.I. murdered Australians in Bali. J.I. planted a bomb that took – just from my community of Maroubra – 8 innocent lives.

Margo: You’re prejudging it.

Bob: Margo, can I just remind you that you’re responsible for writing in the Sydney Morning Herald that Australian tourists in Bali provoked that attack. I think that was a disgraceful comment by you in your piece in the Herald when you wrote that Australian tourists by their demeanour in Bali provoked that attack.

Margo: I did not say that.

Bob: Well, we’ll give you the quote. You wrote that. I’m paraphrasing, but you wrote that.

Margo: I did not write that.

Bob: I will deliver you that quote.

(Unidentified journalist): Can we have the press conference?

…

Bob: We’re not taking away the rights of people to question and challenge police action.

Margo: Mr Carr, you’ve excluded lawful industrial and political protests. Does that mean that if like last week police refuse a permit for a march –

Bob: No, no, that is all lawful. No, no. I am adamant that nothing in this reflects the right to demonstrate. The right to demonstrate –

Margo: But you’ve got “exclusion of lawful industrial and political protests”?

Bob: Well, of course we do that. Do you want me to say that we exclude illegal activity? Of course we say that.

Margo: Police refused a march permit last week and Mr Costa said it was illegal activity. They could declare that a target area –

Bob: Margo, please relax. Please relax. It is inconceivable that these powers could be applied to a demonstration. This is not about a demonstration. This is about murder. What happened in Bali was the murder of innocent Australians, not people who were guilty because they were celebrating in a third world country as you argued in the Sydney Morning Herald. Not that at all.

…

Towards the end of the press conference, a reporter asked Mr Carr about revelations in the Herald the the wife of a a senior ALP minister, John Della Bosca, was set to benefit from a major government tender (smhtoday). Mr Carr said tender processes in NSW were squeaky clean, and moved on to berate NSW opposition leader John Brogden for receiving money from a big accounting firm. Mr Carr repeated that he would ban sponsorship of politicians, and began to leave.

Margo Kingston: Mr Carr, if you are going to ban sponsorships why don’t you ban donations from developers?

Bob Carr: Margo, Margo let me …

Margo: Why can you do one and not the other?

Bob: Margo, let me supply you with the quote that you wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald …

Margo: Fine …

Bob: …which is an insult to the Bali dead.

Margo: Could you, could you answer my question please?

Bob: An insult to the Bali dead.

Margo: If you are prepared to ban sponsorships to politicians are you prepared to ban donations to developers?

Bob: To blame the Bali dead –

Margo: Sure give me the quote, OK –

Bob: To blame the Bali dead –

Margo: I did not do that.

Bob: – is a disgrace –

Margo: You’re lying.

Bob: – and you are a parody of a journalist.

Margo: You’re lying.

Bob: You are a parody of a journalist.

Margo: Thanks for your accountability.

Carr: You’re a joke.

***

Rehame transcript

SYDNEY 2GB CHRIS SMITH 12.31PM

19TH NOVEMBER, 2002.

DISCUSSION ABOUT SYDNEY MORNING HERALD JOURNALIST MARGO KINGSTON.

INTERVIEW WITH NSW PREMIER BOB CARR.

CHRIS SMITH – PRESENTER: As I said, the Premier Bob Carr, he’s now just emerged from that press conference announcing the tabling in parliament of the Terrorism Police Powers Bill 2002. The bill, as I said, will give the NSW Police the powers they need to deal with terrorist threats and emergencies, but the bill won’t go into law until thoroughly debated in parliament, according to the Premier. I fear a giant nose being thrown into the works from the Upper House. However, I’ve got the Premier on the line now. Premier, good afternoon.

BOB CARR – NEW SOUTH WALES PREMIER: G’day, Chris. How are you?

SMITH: Good. Thanks for finding the time. That press conference went a little longer than expected.

CARR: Yes, it did.

SMITH: These nosey reporters, Premier, they tend to ask questions until –

CARR: There was only one who I found objectionable, and that was Margo Kingston, reportedly from – purportedly from the Sydney Morning Herald, who I cannot deal rationally with. And she wrote a column –

SMITH: Right.

CARR: – attempting to argue that it was Australian tourists who provoked the Bali bombing, words to that effect. And as someone who knows victims of the Bali bombing, I found that intolerable, and I will not cop it and I will not cop her.

SMITH: And then she had the temerity to sit there in a press conference and argue between herself and yourself.

CARR: And challenge the powers we’re giving the police to minimise the chance of more bereavements to Australian families from a terrorist strike. Since I read her piece of I guess it’s a month a go now, saying, it was something in the way Western tourists behaved in Bali that invited the bombing. I’ve been rather angry, I’ve got to say.

SMITH: And I think most people would join you in that.

…

***

October 13: Bali

by Margo Kingston

October 14 2002

The Prime Minister said a true thing today, that the Australian people will take some time to absorb what happened in Bali in the early hours of October 13, our time.

For the families still looking, we cry with and for them. For those who are injured and those who saw their pain, we hold them and hope they will one day again sleep an innocent sleep.

There is no meaning yet. We don’t yet know for sure what happened. We don’t know who did this. We don’t know why. Shock needs to be deeply felt before we’ll know how we want to respond. Time needs to pass. Our casualties need to be identified and grieved for.

There are close links between us and Bali. We go there to surf. Many of us have businesses in Bali and live there. I was in Byron Bay on holidays when someone rang with the news. In this morning’s local paper, The Northern Star, Byron Bay resident Sai Frame, 25, described the horror. He and his grandparents were at Kuta Beach to celebrate the opening of a friend’s shop, across the road from the Sari club.

“I was at the Sari club a few days ago. You couldn’t get a higher concentration of young tourists anywhere in Bali,” Sai said. “It’s so hard to believe. Bali has always been considered the safest place in Indonesia. Noone thought this would ever happen. Much of the wealth of Bali is in Kuta Beach, and most of it is dependent on the tourist industry.”

Beautiful Bali is finished for us. We won’t want to go where we’re not welcome.

I know little about Bali, and whether we’ve respected and nurtured the place we love to visit or colonised it with our wants. A friend in Byron Bay said Australians had taken Bali over, business wise, and that acquaintances with businesses in Bali were considering coming home before this horror. They sensed resentment, and felt a growing unease.

Maybe part of it is the lack of services for locals. A completely inadequate hospital, for instance, so graphically exposed in the aftermath of the horror. Some people – foreigners like us, elite big-city Indonesians – make their fortunes. Have residents lost their place, their power to define it? Did the big money fail to give enough back to the people who belong there, whose home it is? Have Muslim extremists destroyed the vibe of Hindu Bali to force us out?

Will we now swing behind war with Iraq or pull out and focus on our home? The Pacific. South East Asia. East Timor, especially, where we’re protecting a baby, Christian democracy. The places where we have duties and responsibilities and, in the end, where our self interest lies. I don’t know.

The image staying with me is in this morning’s Northern Star. Cartoonist Rod Emmerson drew the Grim Reaper clutching a surfboard called ‘Terrorism’. From the skull, the words “…And I’ve been to Bali too.”

***

So this is what it’s like on the other side

by Margo Kingston

October 16 2002

We’re “the other” now. The other is us. Now we know the feeling of living on the edge of fear. Now we feel vulnerable. Now we’re a target.

What have we done to deserve this? What have any victims of terrorism done? It’s terribly difficult to accept what happened to our people in Bali. It’s not possible to intellectualise the pain of being intellectualised by the people who did this to us.

Some experts say we’re up ourselves to think our enemy aimed at us. It was a generalised aim – us as Westerners, Bali as Hindu, the Indonesian government as ripe for overthrow. Others say we were the target because John Howard is so sycophantic to the American compulsion to invade Iraq. My feeling is they chose us to kill and maim because of East Timor. Australia, white Western outpost, sends its troops to rescue the East Timorese dream of independence, then stays on to protect and nurture the baby Christian democracy. Is this the cost?

Whatever the motivations, the fact is we’ve suffered the biggest loss. This is our experience. Many are trying to define it for us, to appropriate it for their purposes, but we mustn’t let them.

This tragedy should see our differences melt as we feel the connection between us as Australians. Webdiarist David Davis felt it in Switzerland.

“On my commute through the Swiss countryside this morning it was dull, dark, grey and unusually cold. I was reading the Times of London and drinking luke warm coffee. On page three was a shot of the Kingsley Senior Football club from Western Australia. Everyone smiling, the larrikin spirit practically leaping off the page. You know for sure these guys would know how to have fun. A night out with those guys would be HUGE – as we would say. That’s what they would have been doing, having a HUGE night. The next day there would be the inevitable post mortem over a breakfast, and comments of “Maaate, such a HUGE night, could you believe it when Dave did that?!

“For a second I was smiling at the picture and forgot why it was in the Times and why I was l looking at it in Switzerland. For a second I escaped and was above the clouds, transported to happy memories. I looked out the window and it came back to me. The horror of what has happened. My God. What is happening in this world and now even to my own – my Aussies.”

How we express our collective grief, how we collectively respond to this horror, will help define us to each other and to the world. The Bali bombing gives us the chance, once we’ve fully felt the pain and formally mourned our loss on our national day of mourning on Sunday, to unite, and to explore what difference we, as Australians, and our nation, Australia, can make to what increasingly seems an inevitable slide into world war, the slaughter of “others”.

Webdiarist David Makinson wrote: “Politicians and commentators of all persuasions will seek to portray their particular cause as noble because we have lost our friends. We must reject this cynicism. Be clear that these poor, poor people died for nothing – a tragic symbol of an abject failure of leadership.”

“The left says our government’s public support of the US makes us a target. We sense the truth in this. The right says that it is folly to think that a passive stance will protect us. We sense the truth in this. The right says a military solution is the only solution. They may be correct. The left says violence begets violence, and they too may be correct. Neither group can recognise the merits in each other’s case, and so the true, far more complex solution eludes us.”

“President Bush said, in the seeming long ago, “You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists”. Wrong, George. We’re against both of you. We wonder if perhaps you deserve each other, but we’re certain we have done nothing at all to deserve you. We, the cannon fodder, oppose you. We are the innocent people of Australia, the US, Palestine, Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, the world, and we are opposed to you. It’s not as simple as us and them. It’s about all of us.”

“Every instinct I have says we need to seek an active path of peaceful action and engagement if we are to have any chance of working through these troubles. I believe this is the test of courage we need to confront – to engage these people at the root of their grievances and hurts – both real and imagined.

“I fear our bravery does not run that deep. The pragmatist in me recognises that we will resort to force. We will dress this up in words of action and purpose, and imagine it a considered and effective response. We will convince ourselves it is necessary and just. It is neither – and it will not work.

“It is a dark time. I fear for my children. Let us pray that somewhere amongst the dross is a kernel of constructive thought which can be built into hope.”

One kernel this week: Australians couple Jennifer Ball and George Pengilly, of Melbourne, did not cancel their plan to marry in Bali after Balinese locals requested them to “please do the wedding”. More than 250,000 Australians visit Bali each year. Many Australians have businesses there. Bali has been our national escape to innocent pleasure. We are in relationship with the Balinese people. They made and laid Hindu funeral flower arrangements to honour our dead. They cried with us, for their dead and ours.