Illustration: Rocco Fazzari. Until recently, Malcolm Turnbull looked like the friendly face of conservatism; the one member of the Abbott government who actually understood democratic governance. How wrong we were. Betrayal was Abbott's word. In giving Zaky Mallah his few dopey minutes of airtime, the ABC had betrayed Australia. Turnbull trotted behind, sending his greycoat army on a "fact finding mission" inside the ABC to sift out "who did what, where and when". Just weeks ago, you recall, this same Minister engineered the sacking of SBS journalist Scott McIntyre for his Anzac-critical tweets. Suddenly, there are political things you can't say in public; views you mustn't express. Suddenly, unless Australian discourse complies with the Minister's acceptability spectrum, heads will roll. Suddenly, our subversions are things whispered in back rooms. Sure, two outbursts may not make a censorship regime. But it is astonishing how few heads must roll before self-censorship embeds itself like a tiny, innocuous chip under the public skin.

Fear-mongering: The impact of the government's interventions is that Zaky Mallah's Q&A appearance will now live forever on YouTube. The many issues here, while inherently separate, were so profoundly knotted together by that memorable Q&A episode as to seem now indissoluble. There's racism (or religionism), conflating Islam with terrorism. There's free-speech, and the right to voice the unpopular or offensive. There's privacy. There's government control of airwaves and creativity. There's fear-mongering for political gain. And there's Ministerial discretion. Whew. Racism is endemic in Australia. Our cities are ringed with successive racisms like the annular rings of the tree. Irish, Afghan, German, Chinese, Lebanese, Greek, Italian, Vietnamese, Sri Lankan, Middle Eastern: the physical pattern may vary but the social pattern persists – last-in, most-hated. The extent to which it just happens that asylum seekers are mainly Muslim and the main terrorist threat is also (extremist) Islam-based could fill a doctoral thesis. But this coincidence allows successive governments to plant and water the public misapprehension that asylum seekers are somehow latent terrorists. This casual conflation of "asylum-seeker" with "terrorist" is every bit as dangerous and wrong as the conflation of "gay" with "paedophile." It is what allows innocents to be locked up without charge, voice or appeal or, worse, returned to almost certain death. And it's what means the Zaky Mallahs are immediately regarded as terrorists while white extremists, even those like Dylann Roof who commit multiple murder for expressly political purposes, are more likely considered "troubled" and "lone wolves".

A recent report published in the New York Times showed that in the US, "since Sept. 11, 2001, nearly twice as many people [48] have been killed by white supremacists, antigovernment fanatics and other non-Muslim extremists than by radical Muslims [26]." Yet still it's the Muslims we routinely label terrorists. Zaky Mallah is a messed up and unattractive person – but that's not actually a test, either for citizenship or for TV news. His tweeting about public rape is especially unpalatable, but scarcely worse than stuff you see on Twitter everyday. He did go to Syria, but on the side of the American-supported Free Syrian Army and upon his return argued at least sometimes (his hallmark is inconsistency) for peace. He was charged with terrorism offences in 2003 but jury-acquitted. He pleaded guilty to threatening officials, was sentenced by the Supreme Court to two-and-a-half years' jail, served his time. Said Justice Wood, "I am satisfied that in his more rational moments [Mallah] lacked any genuine intention" of taking lives. Doesn't sound like a technicality to me, Junior Minister Ciobo. (And in what world is retrospective criminality morally defensible?) In truth, the Abbott government's intemperate interventions hugely augmented the impact of this Q&A episode – which will now live forever on YouTube. Why? Well here Zaky Mallah and the government have interests in common. Fear-mongering wins elections, even as it garners attention for needy individuals. Heavens, they couldn't have scripted it better.

The right's feigned shock at Mallah's Q&A airtime is undermined by the 134 Mallah stories and letters published between his 2005 release and his ABC appearance, 40 in News Corp outlets and fully 17 in The Australian. So much for Paul Kelly's pompous condemnation of Mallah's Q&A appearance. But this is not about Zaky Mallah, his IQ or his threat-status. Far more serious is whether this regal, random ministerial intervention – "offensive!" "betrayal" "heads should roll!" – is in any way acceptable. Here we hit the broader issue of ministerial discretion. I understand Brandis' disquiet about arts-money allocation. I get Turnbull's suspicions of media bias, although "objectivity" is not just halfway between Labor and Liberal (small playspace indeed!). I acknowledge Dutton's concerns about returning jihadists. But the answer is not to rip jurisdiction from the courts and institutions. If the system is flawed, fix it. Ripping its guts in favour of the big guy's personal delectation will have us all routinely raped in the back of the ministerial car, and unable to breathe a word. For fear. For fear. Twitter: @emfarrelly