The evidence is slowly coming in that the Federal Government – taken collectively – lied before and after the election about asylum seekers in order to gain political advantage and win the election and to justify its actions after the event.
It lied in telling the Australian people that people seeking refugee in Australia had thrown their children overboard in order to blackmail Australia into rescuing them.
It lied in telling the Australian people that asylum seekers in detention had sewn their children’s lips together in order to blackmail the Australian Government into taking them out of detention.
It exaggerated the possibility that some of the boat-people seeking asylum were terrorists and security risks – to the extent that the Australian people were deceived.
It received phone taps of Australian-based calls from the Defence Signals Directorate, contrary to the law at the time.
We have witnessed several days of dissembling, buck-passing and hairsplitting, but the brutal conclusion is that this Federal Government engaged in a ruthless pursuit of power – vilifying asylum seekers and those Australians who sought better treatment for them, being careless with the truth, being careless with the privacy of Australians.
It is an appalling start for a Government. It is a Government that cannot be trusted.
All the fiscal rectitude and good management of the economy are of little moment when faced with the Coalition’s immoral misleading of the Australian people into a false perception of asylum seekers as a threat to the borders of Australia so the Coalition could boast that it was the only party to lead Australia in the face of the threat. The pity is that a majority of Australians swallowed this view in the first place, but having been misled in this way, the Government has the weakest imaginable mandate.
Having been caught the Government went into classic defensive mode – blame was to be heaped upon those who would cause the least political trouble and those with the least chance to defend themselves. Blame the bureaucrats. If that does not work, blame someone who is no longer in Government – former Defence Minister Peter Reith. So Prime Minister John Howard and Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock say they were not advised that their was no evidence to back the statement that the refugees pushed their children into the water and they were not advised that the photographs issued in the Government’s name to back the claim were taken after the boat the refugees were on had sunk – even though their departments had been told by the Defence Department.
It is not credible. These matters were a critical part of the Government’s electoral strategy.
The Government’s asylum-seeker policy is now a shambles. It is based on falsity and exaggeration. To regain credibility it must stop demonising these people and start treating them with the humanity that the average unmisled Australian would give to them.
The most cynical element of this whole exercise has been that at the very times Australians began to have empathy with people who have fled terror and to feel something about children behind razor wire – that they were human with loved ones – the Government turned up the demonising propaganda – they are terrorists and child abusers, not like us.
The Government knew that the children overboard incident did not take place a month before the election, yet it shamefully went on to exploit the incident. Squirm and prevaricate as individual members of the Government might, that is the fact.