I really dislike the term invasion day, the indigenous protests on Australia Day were also off the mark in my opinion. However, in a free and democratic society, you are allowed to protest in a lawful and non-violent manner, so they had every right to be there.

Despite my dislike of this rally on Australia Day, I absolutely deplore what happened at the protest. This was a terror attack, or at least a potential terror attack. A man, who had his identity suppressed, hurled an explosive device into a crowd where approximately 2500 people had assembled. Fortunately, the bomb failed to detonate and we are so glad it did, the bomb was filled with ball bearings and screws, the potential harm to the assembled people could have been horrific. This was planned as a mass casualty event, the intent was to injure as many people as possible.

There has been some concern that it took nine days to declare this as an act of terrorism, although I am ok with this. The police need to conduct investigations, they need to collect evidence, and they need to lay charges. What we don’t want to see is the accused found not guilty at trial and released. This needs to be a watertight case, terrorism is life imprisonment and nobody wants to see him on lesser charges. This is the first time terrorism charges have been laid in Western Australia, they don’t want to mess it up, so if it takes another week and a half to get this right, then no problems.