For the people who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions – everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things; bread and circuses.

Juvenal’s much quoted reference to panem et cicuenses looms large in out daily lives, and yes, you could argue it has ever been thus.

Keep the people fed – both in terms of bread and entertainment – and you can get away with almost anything.

And so, as Australian Cricket team captain Pat Cummins challenged for the record of Australia’s longest press conference over something that happened eight years ago, Australia’s mainstream media left everything from the weather to the announcement of a new counter-terrorism office (we love cops, but not deradicalisation programs, so now concerned parents can dob their children straight in to the cops – what could go wrong?!) to broadcast him.

From there, it was into the news that there was not enough evidence to charge Sydney Swans players for their most recent scandal.

We did, finally, get to a little from COP31, where Australia, like most of the West has continued the tradition of being disappointing, but again not too much. And, despite the numerous defence correspondents, we didn’t hear anything about one of the biggest changes to domestic defence powers in about 50 years.

The overreach in the defence capability act changes is explained away with “trust us”. Trust us to consult (even though nothing happens if we don’t, and it doesn’t matter if you don’t want what we have decided – you have no rights of appeal).

Trust us not to abuse the extraordinary powers granted in this bill to seize land and override laws for Australia’s “strategic” and “capability” interests. Trust us that, even though the minister can designate anything they want as a “defence zone”, it won’t be used indiscriminatorily – even though under the legislation it can include a vehicle that snapping a photograph of could land you in jail for up to two years.

There is also the fun “roving” defence declaration, which means defence can claim areas on a moving basis.  It doesn’t even have to be static.

The fact sheets that accompany the bill are filled with platitudes like how the legislation doesn’t intend on overriding native title or environmental laws, but sitting alongside it. But it also overrides laws – ones we don’t know about, because those laws aren’t listed.

Given the commitments and unanswered questions surrounding the second pillar of AUKUS, “just take our word for it” should not be good enough for anyone.

But it is apparently enough for both major parties – and the committee whose job is to review this legislation. The committee, which has only Labor and Coalition members after the major parties successfully teamed up to keep out the crossbench, heard only from the departments of Defence and Home Affairs, lobby groups and arms manufacturers in the hearing hastily organised to review this piece of legislative overreach.

Despite the scandalously short time frame for submissions, Maritime Union Australia, IPAN and other civil liberty and human rights groups mobilised to respond. But none of the Labor/Coalition members of the committee reviewing the law thought it necessary to hear their concerns in the hearing, which will be used to form the basis of their report to recommend the legislation be passed.
Which is on track to be passed before the end of the year.

The hurry has not been explained. Nor has the secrecy. Asked by this column, Greens leader David Shoebridge said he too was shocked at the speed at which the bill was being rammed through the parliament.

“This bill is being sold as dealing with drones over Australian bases but it goes far beyond that. This introduces sweeping changes that, on initial reading, pose a serious risk to the right to protest and civil liberties,” he said.

“Given the hopelessly inadequate responses the Australian Defence Force has had to drone intrusions, there would be widespread support for legal reforms that gave them the powers needed to deal with drones. Unfortunately that’s not what this bill is designed to do.

“There are also serious issues around the right to protest. Labor is proposing laws that say if you in any way ‘obstruct’ defence activities, you get seven years in jail. All those people protesting at Pine Gap, protesting AUKUS are rightfully concerned about this.

“The minister can also just go around designating whatever he wants as a ‘defence zone’. He can make a truck a defence ‘zone’, and it turns into a mobile seven-year prison sentence if you in any way get in its way.

“The fact that Labor has funnelled this bill into their new secretive defence committee is deeply troubling. That committee is a rubber stamp populated only with the Liberals and Labor, who are in lockstep with Trump, lockstep with AUKUS, and dead against protest.”

But hey! The cricket aimirite?! As John Oliver once quipped, “the easiest way to do evil is to make it boring”.