This book is a substantially revised and updated version of a project first published as In Fear of Security: Australia's Invasion Anxiety in 2001, immediately following the events of 9/11 and prior to that year's national election. I am very grateful to the publishers at Cambridge University Press, especially Susan Hanley and Pauline de Laveaux, for giving the book a new life, as I am to the anonymous readers who recommended its publication. My gratitude also goes to Ken Wark and Tony Moore who first put their faith in the project back in 1999.

The changes I have made are intended to bring the book up to date, to improve upon its arguments and respond to the political climate that followed its publication, and to make it more accessible to a wide readership. A new chapter has been added to cover the period after 9/11, with a particular focus on Australia's treatment of asylum seekers and its involvement in Iraq and the war on terror. A new conclusion has also been written and the introduction revised substantially. Two theoretical chapters in the original book – on security in international relations theory, and on the development of the national security state in Western political thought – have been omitted. A more developed version of that latter chapter can be found in my theoretical work focused on the war on terror, Beyond Security, Ethics and Violence.