AIRPORT SECURITY
Daily Telegraph - January 2007

When I read a fortnight ago that a woman in America had accidentally put her baby through an airport X-ray machine I found that the story inspired in me an unexpected sympathy. When going through airport security these days there are times I feel like curling up in the foetal position and putting myself through the machine.

Security at airports was always a tedious inconvenience but has now reached such heights of ritual complexity that it has created an entirely new set of social terrors, far more confronting than any threat of random violence from any number of faceless maniacs.

Taking off your belt, for instance, in front of hundreds of strangers has introduced a new blurring of the public and private spheres that I'm not sure I'm at all comfortable with. How much of your underpants, for example, is it acceptable to display while trying to retrieve your mobile and glasses from the X-ray machine especially if they're the ones with the dodgy elastic that I buy in a five-pack from Kmart?

And if you are made to remove your shoes but are wearing nylon socks you bought for 50c on the street in Bangkok because you ran out of clean ones and haven't changed them for three days in 33C heat - as happened to me in one recent and memorable incident - is this acceptable grounds for refusal?

The Government's recent announcement that Australia will ban liquids in carry-on luggage from the end of March looks set to only increase my travel neurosis. The Prime Minister has done his best to reassure us that these inconveniences are for our own good. Not only will they keep us safe, he has said, but he understands our annoyance.

This is an assertion I would question.

Has John Howard, I wonder, ever stood in a queue at the metal detector anxiously listening to the final call for his flight while the Lebanese girl at the front opens all 34 metal buckles on her knee-high suede boots, removes earrings the size of a Versailles chandelier and then demands to know why she can't take into the cabin all nine pieces of matching Louis Vuitton luggage?

Has he ever endured the impotent rage that comes of standing behind a Chinese tour party who are trying to cram oversized laundry bags full of T-shirts through the X-ray machine; or felt the burning humiliation of being told to switch on his laptop only to realise he has not changed his screen saver that features a picture of a male friend dressed as Brett Michaels from Poison straddling him at a fancy dress party? Unless they're flying Commonwealth One on Bali package deals these days then I very much doubt it.|

The new era of airport security has created a minefield of frustrations that have soured travel and will probably only get worse. The woman with the baby wasn't mad or stupid, just ahead of her time.

© Brendan Shanahan 2008