As Orwell said, “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.” What brought this to mind was this passage from a story in today’s Australian: Sydney siege: one year anniversary

On the first anniversary of the Sydney siege, the city’s Lord Mayor Clover Moore has said that it “wasn’t a terrorist event”.

“I thought it was really important as a city leader to stress that this is a one-off, isolated event by someone who shouldn’t have been out on bail, a very violent background, clearly a mental illness,” Ms Moore told ABC TV this morning.

“It wasn’t a terrorist event. I didn’t want our multicultural harmonious community to be divided,” she said.

Ms Moore will now have to provide a definition of what is a terrorist event so that we will know one when we see one.