The Liberal foursome
All sounds a bit Nixonian, doesn't it? A do-it-yourself dirty tricks unit operating in the western suburbs of Sydney trying to nobble the Labor Party by arousing anti-Muslim sentiment.
Back then, it was hapless burglars. Now it is hapless husbands. The men responsible for the bogus Islamic leaflet, making the ludicrous suggestion that the Labor party sympathised with the Bali bombers, were Gary Clark and Greg Chijoff.
Mr Clark is married to the retiring Liberal MP. Mr Chijoff is the spouse of , the Liberal party candidate who hopes to replace her. These days, in the era of political marital partnerships, it's fashionable to talk of "two-for-the-price-of-one". If you elect the husband, you get the wife thrown in - or vice versa. This is a foursome that you would surely want to avoid.
In Australian politics, has the race card ever been so played so crudely and so clumsily? Comments please. Did they really think that voters would believe that the Labor Party sympathises with the perpetrators of the Bali bombings? Surely the answer to that is a universal and unequivocal no.
For its critics, this will reinforce the Liberals' reputation as the mean and nasty party. Critics may also say it makes the Liberals look completely stupid.
Is this a local difficulty, with the fall-out limited to the seat of Lindsay? Manifestly not - especially as it came to light just as Mr Howard was due to make a in Canberra. Unsurprisingly, reporter after reporter got up after his speech to ask question after question about the scandal. Obviously, he condemned the leaflet, and said its authors should be expelled from the party.
But did they think they were doing the government's bidding? In 2001, Mr Howard was accused of appealing to a xenophobic streak among some electors over the controversial "" and episodes. Though obviously misguided, perhaps Mssrs Clark and Chijoff thought this was one for the gipper
On the future of his party's candidate in Lindsay, Mr Howard had this to say. "We, I hope, live in a society where we treat husbands and wives - although we respect the closeness of their relationship - we treat them as individuals and we shouldn't automatically transfer blame for the deeds of one onto the other." In just over 24 hours, the voters of Lindsay will decide.
For Mr Howard, this is clearly deeply unhelpful. The Liberals have lost another day of this campaign over a scandal of their own making. Just as important, such is the controversy surrounding their candidate in Lyndsay, that they may possibly lose a vital marginal seat - absolutely essential to the government's survival.
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Sitting on a margin of 2.9% the electorate in question - Lindsay - was already considered an all but "lost" seat as far as the government was concerned. So, this scandal will only put any doubt over what will happen in Lindsay on Saturday to rest rather than change anything.
What it has done is galvanize the distrust of the Liberal party from the migrant communities who feel that the government is racist and against non-white Australians. This will hurt the government with the traditionally conservative East-Asian voters who make up such an important proportion of electorates such as Linsday and the PM's own seat of Bennelong.
Furthermore, the news of this scandal broke on the morning of the PM's final prepared address at the National Press Club. This was his last attempt to steal the initiative back yet he was completely overshadowed by this scandal. All the newspapers and TV reports led with the 'fake flyer' story and not the PM's address.
The PM retains plausible deniability but he and his party will be hurt by this nevertheless.
Nick, one aspect of this affair that has gone unreported so far is the speed with which Howard has publicly responded to allegations of racism. When Pauline Hanson first hit the headlines a decade ago, Howard let her racism go unchallenged for a period of time, quietly communicating to the white working class he was sympathetic to their prejudices. The reason for his immediate response this time is his own personal survival - his seat of Bennelong is now dominated by people of non-English speaking backgrounds, especially Chinese and Koreans. For him not to respond straight away would probably be fatal, even though the whole situation reflects poorly on what the Liberal Party has become on his watch. The real issue is why such crude racists feel at home in John Howard's Liberal Party.
It seems to me that the main damage to John 'Babies overboard' Howard is that it reminds people of so many previous comments and actions ranging from Tampa through David Hicks to Dr. Haneef.
Given that the current coalition candidate for Lindsay has gone to ground there will be quite a few people who suspect that her party is in some way involved.
The blood of the millions Iraqis that Howard has been complicit in murdering is finally catching up with him.
Regards, Alex
Tiredness! That's why we'll change the government not because of clumsy election scams; not because "Old Europe" tells us we should; not because Howard is friends with Bush; simply because it's time for a change.
Like all commentators you want it to make out the reasons are complicated but they are not; we simply think the governments been there too long.
They've done a good job and given Australia a defence force that enables us to project power but we want a change.
Completely agree with Australian voter - now compounded with the admission that they did something similar in the 2001 election. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot...it's certainly going to influence the swinging voters - and will have an effect in other electorates.
The Chaser team have offered Jackie Kelly a job, after she described it as a `Chaser style prank'. See:
Completely agree with Australian voter - now compounded with the admission that they did something similar in the 2001 election. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot...it's certainly going to influence the swinging voters - and will have an effect in other electorates.
The Chaser team have offered Jackie Kelly a job, after she described it as a `Chaser style prank'. See:
The Liberals have been doing dirty tricks in other electorates -- just take the 'skull and crossbones' appearing on a hate campaign ad about same-sex couples that is currently doing the rounds in Tasmania.
Racism and homophobia all in one campaign -- and this from the party led by Prime Minister John Howard, who said that he doesn't believe in discrimination against same-sex couples and would remove discrimination.
He didn't, and now his party finds it convenient to beat up on gay couples.
Sickening. That's just another reason why the PM has to go.
The race card has worked before for the Liberals - take Tampa, Children overboard.
In today's The Australian newspaper one of the opinion pieces notes that maybe - in a strange twist of psychology - this will work to help the Libs.
The writer says it will place the issue of Islam in Australia back into the minds of voters, despite the rightly appalling circumstances in the way it was done.
Quite like Tampa and children overboard, but then again, not so like them.
Strange indeed.
Sadly, this may work in favour of the Liberals. There is still the "xenophobic streak" amongst certain sections of Australian society (as displayed by the Cronulla riots), and such a blatant act of vilification may have what must have been the intended effect from the 'Kelly Gang' - making voters think that Labor in some way condone the actions of the Bali Bombers, and other terrorists.
However, John Howard's claims that these actions were in no way known about or sanctioned by any part of the Liberal Party seem laughable - the group include the husband of a sitting minister, the husband of said minister's hopeful replacement, and a member of the NSW Liberal Party Executive, and they were operating out of the Kelly family home. Add into this mix that Labor appears to have been tipped off by a source within the Liberal Party, and the claims of 'plausible deniability' for the Libs seems to have gone, like those unfortunate kids of yesteryear, overboard.
Well said Nick - the irony of Howard condemning the leaflet when he has played the race card so often himself is a really good example of what an outrageous hypocrite this man is.
As for the 'don't condemn the wife because of the husband' - well, just a few months ago it was an all out attack on Kevin Rudd because of his wife's business interests! Pathetic.
The thing I didn't understand about the criticism, and this is something that comes up time and time again on this topic, is how being anti-muslim equates to racism? Am I automatically a racist because I am an atheist?
The issue that is boiling behind the net-curtains of the largest suburban land-mass on earth relates to a new culture that is being forced upon us - islam has nothing to do with race, it's a set of religious\moral beliefs that people adopt of their own free will...and which frankly I find incompatible with western democracy - and before anyone says that is contradictory - ask yourself how much longer must we tolerate the intolerant?
Neither Lib\Nat nor the ALP have the balls to address any truly meaningful issues in this country, they've both lost sight of what it means to be a government - at the bottom of the social ladder doing what we the people tell them to do.....they only reason we don't train monkeys' to do the job is that it would be a waste of the monkey's talents.
As someone with over 30 years experience of Australian election campaigns, I must say that this sort of thing happens all the time. And at the state and local government level the Labor Party are masters of the last minute flyer or telephone campaign, usually funded by trade unions, which distorts the position of their opponents.
Most campaigns just dismiss this sort of thing as par for the course - part of the rough and tumble of campaigning Aussie style. Clearly the campaigners in Lindsay were wrong, but what they did is nothing new.
I am originally from Middle East (Iran) and I completely understand that every government is responsible for all the rumours in the society. It doesn't matter whether it is Australian government or Iranian government. Here in Australia, Australian government make rumours about Muslims, when I was in Iran, Iranian government made rumours about Western culture. Still, Iranians feel much much better about Western culture than Australians... I think it relates to the fact that just few Australians have met Middle East...Anyways, we need a change! No more Liberal please!
This sort of crude political cheap shot is unfortunatley par for the course in Australian election campaigns.
Usually it is not quite so blatantly racist, though the Liberal party always surprises.
The Liberals, in my opinion, are racist to the core. They exploit anti-immigration sentiment as much as they can.
As Alireza says, all governments engage in propoganda and the Liberal propoganda often exploits fear of foreigners.
Having said that, I know Labor does some underhanded stuff too at polling time.