There’s no denying the horrific nature of the bikie attack at the Sydney airport on Sunday March 22. As it happened I landed in Sydney from Adelaide about 30 minutes after it happened. My fellow passengers and I were totally unaware of what had transpired but we did remark on the eerie silence and uncharacteristic emptiness of the baggage carousel area. When I finally saw the news reports of the awful event a bit later in my hotel room, my first thought was how disturbing it must have been for the unfortunate and unwilling witnesses – not to mention the bloke who died.

But it wasn’t too long before I was asking myself about airport security – the airport security that we pay through the nose for and is so irritating in its mindless attention to minute detail.

Consider this: airport security personnel are pretty quick to insist that I remove my RM William boots before I proceed to the departure area and they’re pretty quick to confiscate my nail scissors if I forget to pack them in my checked-in luggage. (Like I’m going to leap out of my seat, force my way into the cock-pit and hi-jack the plane with a pair of RMs and a manicure set.) So perhaps I can be forgiven for wondering where the security people were when a bunch of bikies chased one of their ex mates through the airport and bludgeoned him to near death in front of the mob.

It may be that the uniformed people who insist that I pad through the scanner in my socks are trained to do that and nothing more. We can all hope, however, that there is a second line of defence - tougher security personnel, armed, well-trained and ever-ready; people who can step in at moment’s notice if things get nasty.

Well, on Sunday 22 March 2008 at Sydney airport, things did get nasty  - and as we passengers pay for airport security every time we fly, someone needs to ask “Teflon Mick” Keelty where these people were. I’m sure if I ever refused to remove my RMs they’d be called in pretty smartly to sort me out.  But they weren’t too quick to respond to a bunch of bikies climbing into one of their own near the check-in counters.

A few years ago I was flying with my 78 year old mother from Adelaide to Brisbane. As she always does when she flies somewhere, she’d read all five pages of the pre-flight information thoughtfully provided to her by the airline. She’d dressed appropriately and she had ensured her carry-on baggage was as stipulated with regard to size, weight and content. Nonetheless, it was clear to the buffed-up security bloke at the scanner that day that Mum was hell-bent on mischief. Accordingly, he insisted that she remove her shoes.

I’m sure other baby-boomers will agree that our mothers can be a trifle obstreperous, especially if they feel they are not being taken seriously. However, at her most difficult, I’m pretty confident that Mum is not going to want to hi-jack the aircraft or blow it up mid-flight. Her travel accessories are a teensy bit idiosyncratic, I admit, but they don’t include a combat knife, hand-grenades or semptex and some detonators.

It was obvious that this bloke did not have a 78 old mother and had no idea of what it takes for a woman of her age to get in and out of her shoes. I was ill-tempered enough to suggest that his scrupulous attention to aviation security would be more productively applied elsewhere.

The upshot of my acerbic observation was that I was lectured, publicly, ungrammatically and at some volume. Meanwhile Mum spent 10 minutes fumbling herself in and out of her walking shoes which, apparently, have metal strips in the insteps capable of bringing down a Boeing 737.

Here’s the thing: I’d feel a whole lot safer in airports if there were some demonstrable priorities. Leave the little old lady in her shoes and, instead, pay a little more attention to the bunch of burly, tattooed blokes barrelling through the airport loaded to the gills on go-ey.

What about it, Mick? Any thoughts?