By Kathy Marks in Brisbane 19 February 2002
The photograph, showing children in life jackets floating in the Indian Ocean, was political dynamite. Released during last year's Australian election campaign, it appeared to provide conclusive evidence that Iraqi asylum-seekers threw their children overboard after their fishing boat was turned back by an Australian warship.
This account of heinous parental conduct on the high seas was given by John Howard's government at the beginning of the campaign and used to justify its crackdown on boat people from Afghanistan and the Middle East. The explosive claims were repeated up until election day. "I don't want people like that in Australia," Mr Howard declared.
His right-wing government was returned to office in November, its political fortunes transformed by its new tough stance on the asylum issue. That startling photograph, which fixed itself in the public consciousness, played no small part in the outcome. But other pictures, published yesterday by the Labour Opposition, cast a different light on events.
They clearly show that children were not in the water because they were tossed in by their heartless parents, but because the fishing boat had sunk. And the photographs were not taken during the confrontation with HMAS Adelaide, as the government claimed. They were taken the next day, while the asylum-seekers were being rescued by the Adelaide's crew off Christmas Island, an offshore territory.
An election campaign already regarded as one of the dirtiest in Australian history was even more sordid than it appeared at the time.
Not content with vilifying vulnerable people for political gain, the government at worst concealed – at best ignored – evidence that contradicted its story. The cover-up is convulsing Australia, with the opposition and the media insisting it casts serious doubt on Mr Howard's credibility and the legitimacy of his election victory.
He and his ministers claim they were left in the dark by naval officials and senior public servants who apparently felt there was no need to tell their political masters the publicised account of the incident was incorrect. But each day the trail of responsibility edges closer to the politicians, and the photographs, taken by the Adelaide's crew, might prove their undoing.
Yesterday the Defence Minister, Robert Hill, admitted that five photographs showing the wider picture of events in the Indian Ocean were e-mailed to the office of his predecessor, Peter Reith, and sent to his advisers. Mr Reith has retired.
And Miles Jordana, a senior adviser to Mr Howard, was warned before the election by Mr Reith's office that doubts were circulating about the veracity of the "children overboard" claims. Mr Jordana did not pass on those doubts to the Prime Minister, he says, because he regarded them as unsubstantiated rumours.
As the opposition leader, Simon Crean, observed yesterday, no such reticence was exercised in relation to the initial reports, which Philip Ruddock, the Immigration Minister, rushed to bring to the attention of a shocked public, without checking them with authoritative sources.
Most people had no problem believing them. For months, the government had been demonising asylum-seekers as queue-jumpers, economic migrants and terrorists attempting to slip into Australia in leaky boats. But scepticism was expressed in some quarters, and so the photographs – the ones that appeared to back up the claims – were published three days later.
The pictures, said Mr Reith, "show absolutely, without question whatsoever, that there were children in the water". (That much is true.) Mr Reith also said he had a videotape that supported his account. Later, when told by defence officials that it did not show children being thrown overboard, he replied: "Well, we'd better not see the video then." The truth has not come out because the government had a change of heart. Naval officers tried to blow the whistle discreetly during the election campaign. When they failed, the chief of the navy, Vice-Admiral David Shackleton, took the brave step of telling the media that the story was wrong.
Mr Howard had no choice but to order an inquiry, and two damning reports on the incident were tabled last week. On the same day, by coincidence, a separate inquiry dismissed government claims that Afghan asylum-seekers at Woomera detention centre sewed their children's lips together during a recent hunger strike. The teenagers did it themselves.
There are signs that the tide of public opinion is beginning to turn. While most people still approve of Australia's hardline refugee policy, an opinion poll two days ago found that 51 per cent of respondents believed the government acted dishonourably during the campaign.
Respected newspapers such as The Australian agree. As it wrote in an editorial last weekend: "During an election campaign fought on the issue of asylum-seekers, John Howard, Philip Ruddock and Peter Reith peddled falsehoods about boat people, then failed to correct their slurs even when public servants at the highest levels knew the truth." Yesterday Australia's most senior civil servant, Max Moore-Wilton, defended the original version of events. Mr Moore-Wilton, head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, told a Senate inquiry: "I am not aware that children have not been thrown overboard. It has not been established that children were not thrown overboard."
The Alice in Wonderland saga continues.
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