It’s apt that in this age of terror, I’m terrified. That’s the idea isn’t it?

But it’s not the terrorists who frighten me. It’s the gung-ho way Australia is, to use a Bush-ism, “smoking them out”: the Government is passing legislation which barters our freedoms for our protection; police are haunting suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne in the dark morning hours; the media are accusing Muslim schools of not teaching Australian values as if that breeds terrorism and the public is calling national hotlines, alarmed.

Is the suspicion really worth it? Seventeen men - eight from Sydney, nine from Melbourne - have so far been arrested in police raids on Tuesday the 8th and Wednesday the 9th of November. One of the eight from Sydney shot a policeman in the hand during his arrest and was henceforth shot in the throat. He, like the others, was charged with conspiring to commit a terrorist act.

The Sydney group is accused of stockpiling chemicals, namely acetone peroxide, used in the preparation of bombs similar to those used in the London blasts. The chemical is also an ingredient in paint stripper and is easily purchased at hardware stores. There is speculation that one of the accused, former extra on Home and Away Omar Baladjam, registered his business as a spray painter in 2003 to validate the purchase of such chemicals although no supporting evidence of this claim has been presented.

The men in the Melbourne group are charged with belonging to an unspecified terrorist organization between July 2004 and November 2005. Seven News reports the group as planning to carry out “jihad, or holy war”.

On November 10th, Melbourne magistrate Reg Marron told the Sydney Morning Herald there was “no clear reason” why the men should pose a greater alleged risk today than they did in 2004. He said it was “still not clear to me on the evidence” why the accused were charged last Tuesday (the 8th) and “not at some other time”.

Prime Minister John Howard says the successful terror raids were not timed to vindicate the passing of much disputed amendments to the Anti-Terrorism Act rushed through Senate the previous week.

"I knew we had to make that amendment, I knew it would strengthen the capacity of the authorities to respond, and I knew that we couldn't make an amendment to a law in haste without explaining the reason," he told the Daily Telegraph on Wednesday. "This suggestion that somehow or other we could've effected the amendment without any explanation is plainly wrong."

The arrests sure explained the amendments to the skeptics. Nationals leader Ron Boswell heckled Labor MPs who questioned the Prime Minister’s terror warning as having “egg all over their face”. If he were The Simpsons bully, Nelson, a nasal “haa-haaa” would’ve sufficed.

But according to lawyers, the amendments leave Division 102 of the Commonwealth Criminal Code untouched. This division relates to belonging or directing a terrorist group and shows that legislative changes had no bearing on the Melbourne arrests. They could have happened in 2004, as Mr Marron said.

For the Sydney group however, a change of wording in the Act allows police arrests when conspiracy in “a” terrorist act is suspected, without police having to specify what “the” attack might be. This paved the way for police to arrest the Sydney suspects, where they couldn’t have a week earlier.

What remains to be seen now is the guilt of the suspects. Are these arrests really saving lives and do they warrant the public hysteria? Bail has been denied the two Melbourne suspects who optimistically applied. The Sydney suspects have been transferred to maximum-security prisons in Goulburn and Lithgow to await trial.

But in the meantime their media trial continues. With police claims of having foiled a “catastrophic” terror attack and the Australian public breathing a grateful sigh of relief, any presumption of innocence is blowing around with Muslim leaders’ pleas for calm.

I will seek that calm. I’ll try to reclaim a belief in the good will of people and try not to narrow my eyes at the next Muslim schoolgirl I see who doesn’t call her friends “mate”. In fact, I’ll take my chances on trains that might carry bombs and in a country that might be breeding “home-grown terrorists” because living life pointing fingers may cause full-scale RSI. And that would be terrible.