THE gruesome terrorist murder of a member of the British armed forces in London should serve as a wake-up call to Australia.
It comes when the terrorist threat is increasing, our ability to combat it is beginning to decline and we are contemplating further handcuffing of our security agencies in their counter-terror efforts.
This was a murder appalling in its close, personal savagery, and especially in the calm, even lucid, fashion in which one of the two murderers explained the Islamist nature of his motives to the mobile phone camera of a passer-by.
At least this repulsive footage means the authorities will not be able to claim there was no political or theological motivation behind the killing.
If these killers were home-grown, it marks something highly unusual, perhaps entirely new, in the terrorist playbook.
For these young men with their London accents will have got themselves to the extreme end point of al-Qa'ida-style savagery and sadism entirely through the internet.
The way they hacked at the soldier with meat cleavers and knives is reminiscent of the beheading of journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in 2002.
Western intelligence agencies have previously believed that extremists who have received serious field training, and direct exposure to combat, are much more dangerous than self-radicalised extremists.
In Australia, the terrorist threat is accelerating in several ways. Security agencies believe about 200 Australians have gone to Syria to participate in the civil war, mostly against the Assad government. Some are definitely involved with the al-Qa'ida-affiliated al-Nusra movement, which now leads the insurgency. But there are many other jihadist groups active in Syria.
Some of these people will return to Australia with extremely enhanced terrorist-related skills, and some are likely to be much more radical than when they left.
Our ability to combat terrorism is also in decline.
Nearly two dozen people are in Australian jails for terrorist offences. Many terrorist plots have been thwarted but people not convicted, and many people overseas have plotted terror against Australia. With the two Bali bombings, Australia ranks relatively highly among OECD nations for citizens killed by terrorists since 9/11.
The single most important and effective counter-terror tool used by Australian agencies has been telephone and electronic communications intercepts - wire tapping.
But more and more phone calls are moving away from telephone companies and being made on the internet.
This means that to retain these central counter-terror capabilities the internet companies which carry these calls must be required, like telephone companies, to keep records of them, in a process known as data retention.
But the relevant parliamentary committee on data retention has not produced a report and the Gillard government has not produced any data retention legislation.
As a result, our ability to combat terrorism is in slow but steady decline.
At the same time, two government-appointed committees have recommended watering down or scrapping several key anti-terror laws, even though there is scant evidence of any abuse of these laws. We are disarming as our enemies are gaining more recruits and new motivation. That is not smart on our part.
If the Syrian civil war does result in a new wave of terror-trained extremists returning to Western countries, it will demonstrate once more the absolute nonsense of blaming terrorism on US, British or Australian foreign policy.
Syria is a nation where the West has had no discernible influence for decades. The conflict ripping it to bits is an internal Islamic sectarian conflict, part of the great Sunni/Shia hatred ripping all through the Arab Middle East.
If this internal Muslim conflict, in which the West has no part, can generate murderous hatred of the West, then anything can.
The desire to target Western soldiers, which we have seen also in thwarted Australian terror plots, is yet another disturbing development in the terror narrative.
