A separate but intertwined crisis for the rulers has also shaken the country's head of state. Peter Hollingworth, the governor-general recently appointed by Howard, has created a public storm with his anti-woman comments and defense of his cover-ups of child sexual abuse by clergymen while he was Anglican archbishop of Brisbane.

In a February 16 editorial, the Sydney Morning Herald noted that not only had Howard's credibility been "seriously damaged," but the military and government bureaucracy had been effectively gagged and politicized and "dragged into the maelstrom of a political campaign," threatening their "integrity" for Australia's imperialist rulers.

In a March 3 speech, former Labor prime minister Paul Keating attacked the Howard government, warning that "Australia's institutions have been eroded in dangerous ways" by being "politicised." Keating listed the high court, the public service, the armed forces, and the governor-general as key pillars of the capitalist state that have been destabilized.

Like Washington, the Australian government faces the exhaustion of its ability to use the September 11 events to drum up a patriotic war fever. The rulers' ability to use a propaganda scare over the need to "stem the flood of boat people" has also receded.

Hundreds of people seeking asylum, thrown into detention camps surrounded by razor wire, along with thousands of supporters, have organized protests to condemn Canberra's brutal treatment of immigrants. These actions are beginning to counter the demagogy of government officials and their ability to justify their treatment of this layer of working people. As a result, the rulers have begun to divide on the issue.

Last August, Howard's cabinet decided to send armed commandos to storm the Tampa, a Norwegian freighter. The captain and crew had rescued 438 asylum-seekers adrift in a sinking vessel and had tried to take them to Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean. As part of Canberra's belligerent stance, a naval flotilla was rushed towards neighboring Indonesia to forcibly turn back any further boatloads of asylum-seekers, or to transport them to camps in Pacific Island countries dominated by Australian imperialism.

The first in a damaging series of revelations in the big-business press came on February 12, when Canberra's electronic spying on communications between the Maritime Union of Australia and the captain of the Tampa during the crisis was exposed and protested. At the time of this spying, the press was excluded from any contact with the Tampa crew or the asylum-seekers.  
 
'Children overboard' lie exposed
This was overtaken by a major news story that had begun to leak out just before the federal elections last year. The most sensational claim of Howard's election campaign--that asylum-seekers had thrown their children overboard--was proved to be false. Moreover, this was knowingly covered up at the highest levels. Instead of being able to claim a mandate for new assaults on working people as the rulers would like, the scandal has undermined the new government's credibility.

Last October, just after the election campaign had begun, the HMAS Adelaide intercepted a vessel in the Indian Ocean that had been abandoned by its crew with 200 asylum-seekers aboard. The Australian warship fired shots across the bow. Some time later a man on board held up his child in a plea for help. Some men jumped overboard as a naval party boarded. The unseaworthy boat was ordered to head north, away from Australia.

Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock twisted an unclear naval communication about the incident into the headline-grabbing assertion that the asylum-seekers had thrown their children overboard. Howard went on to insist this was to "blackmail" his government. He pounded on the theme that such parents were undesirable people to be let into the country.

Then defense minister Peter Reith claimed the false story was "an absolute fact." He released photographs showing a female sailor from the Adelaide in the water with a woman and child. The government issued orders gagging all enlisted military personnel from speaking publicly on the case, an order which remains in effect. This was the most explosive of Canberra's litany of false accusations against asylum-seekers.

Howard and his ministers coupled their assertions with demagogy about the need to build a "Fortress Australia" and other anti-immigrant notions that had been the trademark of ultrarightist Pauline Hanson and her One Nation party. They sought to dehumanize the immigrants, mostly working people from Central Asia and the Middle East seeking refuge and a better life in Australia. Labor Party leaders went along with this reactionary campaign until they were defeated at the polls.

The orchestrated climate of political polarization over the issue coincided with the buildup to the imperialist assault on Afghanistan, and helped Howard to win a third term in November. The new Labor opposition leader Simon Crean later labeled this a "dirty victory" after the government had "lied, spied and denied."  
 
False story exposed
It wasn't until February that the truth about the photos shown by the defense minister began to emerge. They were in fact cropped from a picture of people abandoning their sinking boat. The deliberately misdated photos depicted a crew member rescuing two people the day after the "child overboard" claims. Both Reith's department and the prime minister's office were quickly informed by senior naval officers that their statements were incorrect.

On February 27, the chief of the Australian military forces, Adm. Christopher Barrie, abruptly withdrew his month-long backing of Howard's stonewalling after pressure from senior officers and the press campaign. In a March 2 editorial, the Sun-Herald, which broke the woman sailor's explanation of the pictures, called for the admiral to "walk the plank."

As Sydney Morning Herald journalist Mike Seccombe wrote, "It took four hours for the Government to distribute false information advantageous to its central election issue, border security, and four months to admit the truth."

As government ministers' story has unraveled, Australia's rulers are becoming concerned at the "erosion of morale" in the ranks of the navy, both over the callous orders to turn back desperate civilians at sea and the Howard government's blatant manipulation of the military for electoral purposes.

An article in the Australian Financial Review noted that, "like other arms of the federal bureaucracy," the Australian military "appears to have been undermined and divided by years of relentless politicization and pressure to tell ministers what they want to hear rather than what they do not want to know." The finance capital daily called it a "calamity unmatched in peacetime."

"It is a grim prospect when more than 5,000 Australian troops are serving in East Timor, Afghanistan and elsewhere, and when the government is significantly increasing defence spending," the article said, and concluded that "in a dangerous world, Australia cannot afford a divided high command."  
 
Questions over 'Pacific solution'
Questions about the lies and the cover-up continue to surface. Following an initial Senate hearing, the opposition Labor and Democrats, who have a majority in the Upper House, are launching a further inquiry to examine not only the "children overboard" scandal but also the Howard government's "Pacific solution" arrangements with Papua New Guinea and Nauru to house asylum-seekers.

At the same time as it has been buffeted by embarrassing leaks exposing its lying election propaganda, the Howard government has proposed a new law that treats any unauthorized disclosure of information by public servants as if it involved espionage or a leak of official secrets.

This has already been met with opposition among sections of the ruling class. For example, in a letter to the federal attorney-general, Daryl Williams, the Fairfax media group, owners of the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age, threatened to challenge the new law in court because it would impinge on constitutional rights of freedom of communication.

"The bill may not be aimed at preventing public discussion, but it would clearly have that effect. [It] hampers public discussion by criminalizing receipt--that is today legal--of information about the workings of government." It would be "used to plug leaks,'' the Fairfax letter said.

On January 29, the Sydney Morning Herald bluntly editorialized against the growing restrictions on press freedom: "The coincidence of an election campaign, the Tampa affair and the September 11 terrorism atrocities has reinforced authoritarian tendencies in the Prime Minister, John Howard, and his colleagues."  
 
 
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