Keeping Australia Safe
ABC, Tuesdays, 8.30pm
If there’s anything surprising about Keeping Australia safe, then it’s what a boring job it is.
I was keen to have a look at this one, then astounded by the boredom factor – until the second episode, and one of the most remarkable scenes I’ve ever seen on television – but more about that in a minute.
So the concept is to go behind the billions of the nation’s treasure that’s spent on national defence, border protection and safety – to see the people behind the wall.
Along the way, they’ve included some people you wouldn’t immediately think of.
The obvious cops and soldiers are there, of course.
But how a magistrate putting offenders back on the street really contributes to our security remains opaque.
They’ve been stringing us along a bit with the soldiers – haven’t seen much of them yet.
There have been plenty of prison warders, Border Force and cops – even isolated outback cops at that.
One interesting diversion was a bloke learning to take calls on the national security hotline – not a guardian that would immediately spring to mind.
But this pretty ho-hum show really hit its straps for me in the second episode, with an all too revealing glimpse of the lives of those who take on the lowest of the low, those for whom society has nothing but complete contempt – those involved in the sexual exploitation of children.
Most of us have never given the policing of this enough thought – but police are necessarily exposed to this material in the course of their work.
We’ve never thought about the mechanics of it – but on Tuesday night we saw the hardship that exposure causes.
Viewing and hearing such material, a hardened policeman is almost a broken man. It’s hard to watch.
So hard, in fact, that they show him the video and audio separately, to try to lessen the impact.
Having never thought about the day-to-day toll of fighting this evil, it’s a truly shocking scene as the clearly shaken officer, lower lip trembling, describes it as “horrific”.
Keeping Australia Safe is like any war – it’s 99 per cent mind-numbing boredom, and 1 per cent sheer terror. It’s worth it for the discomforting revelation of the 1 per cent.
– Jason Beck
