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September 10th, 2011 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda AS THE world commemorates the 10-year anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Australia’s bill for fighting terrorism edges towards $30 billion, and local analysts are questioning whether we are getting value for money.
The $30 billion figure is an estimate, based on expert analysis of Australian spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the rivers of cash poured into police and intelligence agencies, and other security measures since the September 11 attacks on the US.
While the spending has been unquestioned by political leaders, analysts are asking if it is time to re-assess whether the risk warrants the expense.
Their concerns come as Prime Minister Julia Gillard prepares to reaffirm Australia’s military alliance with the US at a ceremony in Canberra tonight.
Ms Gillard will tell those gathered, many of whom will be relatives and friends of the 10 Australians who were killed in the attacks, that she intends to forge even closer military ties with the US in the shared fight against terrorism.
In New York and Washington, counterterrorism officials have been working to determine the veracity of a tip-off about a planned al-Qaeda bomb strike in the US to coincide with local commemoration ceremonies.
Streets in Manhattan have been closed to traffic and police are patrolling subways and blocks around the Ground Zero site, where President Barack Obama and former president George W. Bush will attend the unveiling of the three-hectare memorial garden tonight (Melbourne time).
With one expert saying the likelihood of an Australian being killed by a terrorist is one in 7 million a year, comparable to the risk of being killed by lightning, some analysts believe that it is time to decide if we are spending too much on the ”war on terror”. The issue will be the focus of a security industry conference in Canberra this week.
Part of the problem in assessing the value of the security bill is a lack of clarity in official accounting, and the absence of any cost-benefit analysis.
Unlike the US, the federal government does not have a separate homeland security budget. Since the September 11 attacks, the US has spent about $US1 trillion ($A950 billion) on homeland security.
Add in the costs of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the figure is about $US4 trillion.
Mark Thomson, a former Defence Department official and now an analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, is an expert on the defence budget.
Drawing on budget figures, he calculates Australia has spent an extra $21.3 billion on defence and security since 2001 on top of what the government would normally have spent.
The largest share has gone on the military commitments to the Iraq war ($2.4 billion), and Afghanistan ($7 billion and counting).
As well, $1.5 billion has been spent on aid to Iraq and Afghanistan.
A further $10.4 billion has been spent on extra security at home, mainly on the federal police and ASIO, the domestic spy agency – in a ”whole-of-government” response.
The nominal increase in ASIO’s budget over the past nine years is 471 per cent, according to Mr Thomson’s calculations. Its budget allocation in 2001 was $69 million. This year it is close to $400 million.
His calculations do not include spending by state and local governments, nor the cost of additional security introduced by business and other non-government organisations.
Athol Yates, executive director of think tank the Australian Security Research Centre, has calculated that Canberra has spent about $10.5 billion on homeland security, while state and local governments plus private industry have forked out another $5.5 billion, taking the total domestic security bill to about $16 billion.
When combined with the extra military spending, the tally is $26.9 billion so far. Given Australia’s commitment to Afghanistan will continue at least until 2014, the bill will easily reach $30 billion in coming years.
More than 100 Australians have been killed by terrorists since 2001 – all of them overseas, the majority in the 2002 Bali bombing. There have been no
terrorist attacks in Australia, but agencies such as ASIO argue they have foiled four ”mass casualty events”.
In a recent speech, ASIO director-general David Irvine said the organisation was investigating ”literally hundreds” of possible terrorist plans.
Mr Yates, who will chair this week’s security industry conference, said there was growing evidence that a lot of the spending was ineffective. ”A key theme [of the conference] is about recalibrating our security response,” he said.
”This is a polite way of saying, ‘Guys, we know this isn’t right any more, we can’t justify it, there’s no evidence to support the expenditure to date.’ ”
Newcastle academic Professor Mark Stewart, co-author of the book Terror, Security, and Money: Balancing the Risks, Benefits, and Costs of Homeland Security, will speak at the conference. He said no one in government was asking how counterterrorism funds were being spent or if the spending was effective.
”There needs to be some accountability, showing evidence that the money they want to invest is a good investment,” he said.
”Given that the risk of an Australian being killed in a terrorist attack is one in 7 million per year … how much more money do we need to spend to make that risk smaller, when the remote risk is about the same as being struck by lightning?”
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