ABSTRACT
This chapter looks to history for the architecture of the war on terror discourse. The architecture of this discourse is coloured by the concept of insecurity, a point supported by Burke-2001, who argues that (in) security has been a potent, driving imperative throughout Australian history. The chapter has created a genealogical map of Australia's security discourse and has provided an insight into our deep cultural grammar. It outlines how discursively constituted insecurity sadly defines Australia's political attitudes towards security, immigration and foreign policy, and that the political elite have, on many occasions, capitalised on that insecurity for political gain, to create an Australia most consistent with their world view. The result has been periods characterised by violence, fear, statism and exclusion; a discourse of security restricted by the doctrine of epistemic realism; the silencing of dissent; and the continued reinforcement of a bogus narrative of Australia, structured around an exclusive imagined community into which others are not welcome.
