Playing show must go on

Peter Roebuck writes in the Sydney Morning Herald the plans of a terror attack during the last series were not a surprise.

The walls came down long ago, the battlelines were blurred, the general population became fair game, the rules went out of the window. Nor is the enemy easily pinned down. Nowadays battles are waged by nationalists, religious extremists and other unsavoury types. No one is sitting in trenches. Hit-and-run tactics, and the fear they create, are the chosen weapon of the ecstatic killers.

Of course the most public representatives of the Western hegemony are in the firing line. No point having an attack unless it spreads alarm, provokes fury. Either you are with us or against us. The more celebrated the figure, the more significant the victim, the better the message is driven home.