ABSTRACT
Popular and scholarly commentary on the policing of political violence in recent years has been dominated understandably by concerns over terrorist activities (as attested in the current volume). This chapter, however, charts somewhat different terrain in that it seeks to review developments in Australia related to other forms of political violence. Such a review is warranted as it is clear that violent crime related to terrorist activities hardly exhausts the array of political violence, and a concentration on terrorist activities and their policing should not obscure serious abuses taking place in other contexts. At the same time, it is possible to connect concerns about terrorism and political violence directed at communities that have been linked in popular (and indeed academic) discourse with terrorism; the reported experiences of many Islamic communities around the world, for instance, have been replete with examples of harassment, discrimination, and violence in the wake of the September 11, 2001, bombing of the World Trade Center.
