This week, ASIO’s Mike Burgess announced in his annual report to Parliament that several years ago they had uncovered and disrupted a spy network. He further divulged that a former parliamentarian had sold out their country.

Leaving aside the question of why Burgess felt compelled to reveal this factoid while keeping the name of the parliamentarian to himself, a bigger question remains… Is Australia’s sovereignty still intact? Was it ever? Have we been betrayed irredeemably?

I’ve recently finished reading a ripping spy novel which I picked up as some light relief from other genres that have been occupying me lately. Adding to the relief was its large font. A sight for sore eyes. Not that my eyes are sore, au contraire, I’ve had cataract surgery and the results have been miraculous. I can see not only the entirety of the letters, but also the copyright sign at the bottom right corner of the eye test chart. A sight for eager, rejuvenated eyes, let’s say.

The spy story is of a double agent, who turns out to be a triple agent, with twists and turns all the way to the climax. I’ve read dozens of these stories over the years; the best ones draw you right inside the head of the double agent, the ‘traitor’ as the conventional narrative would have it. They somehow have to keep behaving ‘normally’ while secretly breaking the rules. All of them know that one day they will be exposed, and that prison or execution is more likely than not. But they cannot, having taken the first step, find a way back to where they began. The spy suffers, and the reader feels the suffering vicariously, as he lives parallel lives. One life outwardly conforms to the narrative of the day, while the other life is one of rebellion. One life obeys the rules, while the other life consists of hiding, evading, pretending, and acting.

How did they get there? What made them ‘turn’? The airport trash novels usually rely on a basic motive such as blackmail or greed. But the better novels (think Graham Greene) are more thoughtful. Disgust with their own system of government? Dismay at injustice? Horror at corruption and lies? These are more nuanced motives with which many of us, in the last four (and counting!) years have become familiar.

How anyone could live through 2020-24 and not have felt these more subtle motive forces in action? Did people really miss what happened to our society and the supposed rule of law that keeps it on track? How bad are the cataracts that blur the crystal clear images of evil in the scenes of dying parents denied visits, of medical treatments withheld, or businesses shuttered and bankrupted, or protesters shot with rubber bullets? My cataracts were bad, but not that bad. How could someone not feel disgust, dismay, and horror at the government response? It’s enough to turn one into a dissident, if not a traitor.

In these circumstances, it begs the question: Who is the real traitor? Everything seems to be backwards, reversed, and upended. In modern times, the traitors don’t hide, they walk about openly, bleating about misinformation and crafting Bills to stop it. The prudent citizen is the one who guards what he says. The traitors bluster and promise nonsense claims about the innocence of global health systems. The prudent citizen leaves his phone at home. The traitors plot to undermine our energy infrastructure. And on it goes.

The double agents in the fictional stories, and even some true stories, guard their secrets even from their own families. Wives and husbands are none the wiser as the agent photocopies the first classified document and smuggles it out of the headquarters. Once they conceal this first act, the concealment of the next is almost certain. The concealment is rationalised in fiction as either a way to protect the innocent spouse, or to combat a darker suspicion that the spouse might be opposed to the agent’s outlook. Perhaps they are even a mole working for the other side. So the spy keeps to himself the things he’s doing to combat the regime.

It must be much the same, I suppose, for plenty of accidental dissidents today. Dissidents from the Big State… Surrounded by those whose cataracts stop them seeing clearly, they might mention a protest letter they’ve written, or a meeting they’ve attended. If the reception is cold, that will be the last time such a thing is mentioned. From then on, they’ll tread more carefully, desperate to preserve relationships. The letters, meetings, memberships, and concealed friendships become like the hidden life of a spy. They know that one day their moment of discovery will come. Will all be lost? Or will the moment be delayed long enough for the universe to right itself, and for the cataracts of the world to be replaced with artificial lenses allowing all to see what has really been going on?

In the meantime, the accidental dissident, loyal to the true Australia, walks the tightrope of conformity, and the stakes get higher and higher.