It comes as little surprise that armed Australian Federal Police officers will soon patrol the corridors of the Parliament of Australia's press gallery.
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After all, Australian politicians have always had a hankering to shoot not only the messenger, but those who elected them.
Long before the television series Underbelly made shooting an heroic Melbourne pastime, politicians had rifle placement slits installed high on the front of the Victorian Parliament in the 1880s to shoot rioting voters.
Only property owners were entitled to vote in Victoria's upper house elections in those days. That may explain the ruling class's need to kill people exercising their democratic rights but even when the system change to allow all Victorians a say in their upper house, nobody did anything about the sharp shooters.
The rifle placements are still in situ gazing down on Bourke Street with a view for a kill.
How far more bucolic the national Parliament seems.
Over the years women have chained themselves to House of Representative railings and weapons of mass derision, including an egg, flowers, and table tennis balls, have been hurled into the chamber. A Tasmanian Liberal MP managed to penetrate the perimeter in a chicken suit.
But since 1992 when an irate Broken Hill arts teacher drove his 4WD across the forecourt into the marble foyer of the new Parliament House Canberra's politicians have been under a growing siege mentality.
That year, the first sprouts in a future forest of road blocks appeared.
Then came 9/11.
Overnight, Canberra was transmogrified into a sort of armed camp: government and military marched proudly in lockstep, border security carpet baggers pulled into town in pursuit of government contracts, the AFP budget was put on steroids, bollards sprouted outside entrances to the Senate and the House of Representatives, and the road around Parliament House was made one-way, presumably to trick would-be terrorists used to driving on the left-hand side.
Such precautions must have worked.
Canberra remained a terrorist-free zone for years.
Then, last September the national terrorism public alert level was raised. MPs established a Parliament House security taskforce including representatives from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Attorney-General's Department, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, the AFP and the Department of Parliamentary Services and the following month, when a convert to Islam killed two Canadian Forces members during an attack on the Parliament in Ottawa, the Australian politicians knew the cold zephyr of terrorism was wafting along their corridors of power.
The Parliament suspended the issue of new sponsored passes and stipulated photographic identification was required for the issue of escorted passes to all adult visitors.
Following a risible panic over the wearing of the burqa in the House of Representatives, parliamentary jobsworths issued an information circular telling people with facial coverings they would only be seated in enclosed galleries.
Clearly panicked, both houses of Parliament approved without debate a $2 million plan to upgrade perimeter security around the ministerial wing with a 2.6-metre high steel fence and two bulletproof, concrete gatehouses and bollards galore.
On February 10, the Speaker Bronwyn Bishop announced: "For obvious reasons, I do not comment on the operational detail of security arrangements. However, I inform members that, as part of the continuing upgrade of security, I have agreed to an armed AFP presence in the attendants' booth adjacent to the chamber in line with security advice."
That is the trouble. In a time of insecurity, nobody comments on security arrangements. They are just arranged, no questions asked, or tolerated.
On Tuesday, workers at Parliament House were told there would be a security briefing on Wednesday afternoon. Presumably gas masks optional.
Damien Murphy is a Fairfax journalist.
