The recent terrorist outrage in Melbourne, as well as the too-frequent rampages by immigrant criminal gangs in that city, will remind Australians that most of the problems confronting the nation are, if not created by the political class, made significantly worse by them.

The terrorist threat will not be answered by measures such as taxpayers being required to spend an extraordinary $130 million on an ugly fence around the already very well protected Federal Parliament, even if by American standards the politicians are not often there.