Gary, Naomi Klein discusses the exponential growth in eaves-dropping and monitoring technologies as a result of the shock of Sept 11.

We live in a world now where joe bloggs can walk down the street and buy a bugging device for $100. 1984 didn't happen. 2007 did.

Yep, this is a realistic fear. Most of the legislation allowing government to monitor and/or censor Australian citizens is already in place. The rest is contained in bills still before Parliament.
A John Howard returned would be a John Howard drunk with power. Which, combined with his right-wing desire for near universal control, would see us all scrutinized at every possible oppportunity.

Les,
not 2007---9/11 in 2001. That was when that the Communist super-villains of yesteryear were replaced by Islamic terrorists as today's prime enemy.

As to 9/11 I think that the U.S has always operated with an enemy whether it was another country or a group within its country eg Jews, Communists,Indians and Negro's. I am not sure that it could actually work without one. It may even implode.

Les,
9/11 lead to the illegal to the warrantless wiretapping program of US citizens by the Bush Administration.

Yes, But a government needs to know what suspicious people are up to. How do they decide they are suspicious? They suspect that they are suspicious. So they treat them as suspects.

It really is quite a simple formula.

Ha, ha.
How naive you all are. Of course New Labor won't forsake the intrusive tools bequeathed it by Howard, Murdoch and Packer.
As Howard built on the foolish precedents set by Hawke and Keating, in turn Rudd and co will gleefully take up the new legislative and administrative apparatus, with its technical wizardry so recently the prized possession of Howard, busy little soul that he has been.
What was reserved exclusively for Howard and co's own purposes in perpetuity goes now to people like Rudd and Swan, eager to assume the Coalition's role as intermediary between big business and the Commonwealth.
Please realise, we live in a Post Keynesian corner of a globalist System!
The dumbing down of media and press will continue apace under Howard Lite.
Press "reform" will come as Rudd is bullied into paying back favours that will allow for greater intrusiveness for the tabloids at the expense of broadsheet media, thus restoring the balance of power to the Right, since Rudd and co then come under the control of the sort of tabloid sensationalism that ruins careers in England.
And we are told as a mantra that the War on Terr'ism is never won and that we are at our most vulnerable vis-a-vis the Dark Forces when finally relaxed again. Rudd has warned quite clearly that he embraces the "Terrism" paradigm- his inheritance of the national security and legal apparatus will be his reward for this considered silence.
And since new Labor are enthusiastic neoliberal supporters of "small" government and "aspirationalism", eternal vigilance will be rquired to clamp down on press lefties, the green left, small "l" liberals and democrats, civil libertarians and other imaginary "terr'ists". Many, many further "reforms" to labor, competition, media regulation and all the other components requiring the extensive/intensive micro-management of "small government" will continue, because in the end a suspiciously-Tory system, except for the Dickensian poverty-struck component now hidden from sight off-shore in coercive sweat shops in Asia, continues.
"The Song Remains the Same"...