It's actually called the Anti Terrorism Act here. And let's define a few things, The Oxford Dictionary calls terrorism “the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.” So terrorists use fear (and violence). A law was introduced to mitigate that. The act of the terrorists that provoked that Bill was the fear, the Gov didn't "use" fear to do anything. It was a reaction to an event that sought to identify and reduce the chance of another act of terrorism occurring in Australia.
If you're going to draw a line between the rational fear of being blown up by a terrorist and the irrational fear of "every Muslim must be a terrorist" so we must introduce laws to control the population, then that is an example of the perception of the individual. Laws are introduced as a reaction to an event all the time. Do you believe that the Gov is only using our fear against us to create these laws to control us?
Let's talk about traffic lights. Uncontrolled intersections have an extremely high risk of a crash resulting in death. Mr Gov comes along and says "hey driver, we are going to put a traffic light here to control the movement of cars so that the risk of a crash is significantly reduced" Is this an example of the Gov using the fear of dying in a car crash to install devices that control our movements?
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