• Peter Browne

06 July 2010Could the belief that boat people influence the way people vote be one of the great myths of Australan politics, asks Peter Browne

AFTER visiting the governor-general at around midday on Sunday 5 October 2001, John Howard returned to Parliament House to announce that a federal election would be held six weeks later. The signs were looking good for the government: the arrival of the Tampa in August had helped it to capitalise on longer-term fears about “border protection,” and the September 11 attacks in the United States had given the broader issue of national security – traditionally strong ground for the Coalition – a dramatic new edge.

But the prime minister’s advisers weren’t leaving anything to chance that day. Viewers of all the major evening news bulletins saw a visual account of the day’s events in Canberra carefully orchestrated by the prime minister’s principal media adviser, Tony O’Leary. To the usual visual elements – the prime minister driving to see the governor-general at Yarralumla, the prime minister announcing the election, opposition leader Kim Beazley responding – O’Leary added two new photo opportunities: the prime minister crossing his private courtyard before leaving for Yarralumla and, later, the prime minister meeting earnestly with his senior advisers. “All networks ran the O’Leary-orchestrated footage, giving Mr Howard the lion’s share of the images on the news,” wrote journalist Dennis Atkins a few days later. “Kim Beazley’s picture was confined to his formal news conference.”

The plan to marginalise the Labor leader on the first day of the campaign was part of a strategy to present John Howard not just as the obvious choice but also as the only choice as prime minister in a time of adversity. Over the next month and a half the Coalition ran a campaign dominated by…

Read the full article