A global survey by Amnesty International - Attitudes to Torture - released in May this year, revealed one in five Australians (just over 21 per cent) believe torture can be justiﬁed in some cases to protect the public. It's a figure that seems very low considering the muted public response to the systematic use of torture by our biggest ally, the USA. Do we really care that, in the years after the September 11 attacks, high-ranking al-Qaeda suspects were pushed close "to the point of death" by drowning in water-filled bath tubs? Are you outraged that others, like the alleged 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was waterboarded a staggering 183 times? Earlier this year, Kate Allen, director of Amnesty International UK, laid part of the blame for public apathy to torture on our desensitisation to the practice via TV spy shows. "Programmes like 24, Homeland and Spooks have glorified torture to a generation - but there's a massive difference between a dramatic depiction by screenwriters, and its real-life use by government agents in torture chambers," she said.

Modern ambivalence towards torture, however, far predates this if we take into account the flippant use in fiction of a term like "the third degree", a euphemism for the "inflicting of pain, physical or mental, to extract confessions or statements" that was widespread in the US up to the 1930s. While Amnesty offered no figures for attitudes to torture in countries like Syria, Iraq or Saudia Arabia (funny about that), a majority of people surveyed in China and India (74 per cent in each case) thought torture could sometimes be justiﬁed. If that accurately represents the views of two countries relatively well-disposed to the US, you'd imagine the sociopaths and murderers who form the command structure of ISIL must laugh themselves silly at the moral self-flagellation the West puts itself through over the torture of terrorism suspects. While ISIL's foot soldiers are only too happy to use hunting knives to saw off the heads of prisoners-of-war, journalists and non-combatants of the wrong religious persuasion, the US Senate is preparing to publish a 3600-page "torture report" on CIA interrogation methods. We're yet to see if it'll contain revelations on the "chemical torture" of prisoners such as Australian David Hicks but I'd wager even if it did, the response of the 79 per cent of the Australian public who oppose torture would fall far short of the anger displayed at, say, a Facebook outage, or bad refereeing decision on the weekend

This is partly down to what people define as torture and also to how "deserving" the victims of torture are perceived to be. The idea that forms the basis of most discussions about human rights is we all have certain inviolable or categorical rights - even terrorists and criminals - that cannot and should not ever be overridden if we are to preserve the dignity of humankind. The utilitarian opposition to this - which those 21 per cent of Aussies would certainly agree with - is the rights of a few can be sacrificed if it benefits the majority of us - "the greatest good for the greatest number" of people. I'd argue, however, many Australians are unconsciously shifting to what Harvard ethicist Michael Sandel has labelled the "third approach" - which takes into account whether the person whose rights are being trampled is getting what's coming to them. "Some would say on utilitarian grounds that you should torture the terrorist suspect if you need the information desperately and you can't get it any other way and many lives are at stake," says Sandel.

"But then put to the utilitarian this question: suppose the only way to get the information from the terrorist suspect is not to torture him but to torture his innocent 14 year old daughter. Would you do it? Even most utilitarians would hesitate. "Why? Not because they don't care about numbers, but because there's a deep moral intuition that the girl is innocent, she doesn't deserve to be tortured. "Whereas a lot of people who would say torture in the original ticking time bomb situation is justified - many of them are resting that thought on the idea that 'Well he's a pretty bad guy anyhow, he deserves rough treatment, he's a terrorist.' "So this idea of who deserves what and why, and what does this have to do with the virtue of persons is at play often without our realising it, in many of the arguments we have," says Sandel. While this might seem like philosophical onanism, it strikes me these are issues that are once again going to forced front and centre by Australia's engagement with an enemy that not only has no qualms about torturing and murdering captured combatants, but also civilians.

ASIO chief David Irvine told the ABC's 7.30 Report Tuesday night he's "actively considering" lifting the terror alert level from medium to high in light of the situation in Syria and Iraq. I wonder whether our taste for torture will also lift if these threats ever materialise? You can follow Sam on Twitter here. His email address is here.