The Race Card That Back-fired

The Howard Government has played the Race Card in the last desperate days of the federal election campaign as predicted – but this time, it’s backfired spectacularly.

When 16 Indonesian asylum seekers were stranded in a sinking boat off Australia this week I held my breath – here we go, I thought, they’ll try another Tampa. But the Howard Government hardly bit. Now we know why – at Liberal Party headquarters, where they’ve been trying to bail their way out of their own sinking ship, the strategists were working overtime in preparation for a race scandal about to hit the government.

The growing storm surrounding a racist, deceitful letter box drop in Western Sydney by senior Liberal Party officials - including the husbands of both the outgoing MP Jackie Kelly and her pre-selected replacement - will not be quieted by the Howard ‘quickstep’ two days out from polling day as he discovered this afternoon following his National Press Club address.

The scandal revolves around the distribution of a leaflet to householders in the seat of Lindsay being vacated by Ms Kelly, the frivolous Liberal MP whose praises John Howard has sung through four terms in office. The leaflet was a despicable piece of racist propaganda designed to capitalise on Islamophobia. It purported to be the work of a non-existent Muslim organisation called the ‘Islamic Australia Federation’ and urged Muslim voters to support Labor at the poll because “we gratefully acknowledge Labors (sic) support to forgive our Muslim brothers who have been unjustly sentenced to death for the Bali bombings”. The leaflet also carried the picture of controversial Sydney Sheik al-Hilaly and claims Labor supports the construction of a (bogus) mosque in the electorate. This is the stuff of Neo Nazi/National Action style propaganda campaigns. And what’s extraordinary is that it wasn’t perpetrated by conspiracy theorists but senior ranking officials within the Prime Minister’s own state party apparatus.

The guilty parties exposed to date include Jackie Kelly’s husband, Gary Clark, the husband of her pre-selected replacement, Greg Chijoff and the biggest scalp to date –Jeff Egan, a senior member of the NSW Liberal Party executive who’s been accused of masterminding the plan. The three have been dumped from the Liberal Party and while John Howard is refusing to apologise to voters about the scandal (typical response from a man who can’t say sorry) he’s condemned the act in the most strident terms, telling the Press Club audience in exasperated tones : "What more can I do? I've condemned it, I've dissociated myself from it, I think it is stupid, it's offensive, it's wrong, it's untrue, I mean for heaven's sake get a sense of proportion.'' That was like a red rag to a bull – the Press Gallery journalists, finally jack of Howard’s racist two-step, kept firing question after question even as they were heckled by Liberal Party supporters in the audience.

The reporters were righteously angry. Howard used his speech to declare his belief in traditional Australian values and hammered the validity of Australia’s involvement in Iraq while mentioning terrorism several times and congratulating himself on his achievements vis a vis sending the military into Aboriginal communities and winding back ‘political correctness’. He may have openly distanced himself from the scandal in Lindsay but here he was blowing the dog whistle again - in between claims of fiscal responsibility.

To make matters worse, earlier in the day, Jackie Kelly told the ABC it was all just a big joke – a drunken ‘Chaser-style prank’ gone awry. She insisted the episode was really rather funny and there was nothing ill-intentioned about the ‘prank’. Legitimate Muslim groups failed to see the funny side. Family members of the victims of the Bali bombings were appalled. John Howard wasn’t laughing either. And, for their part, the Chaser responded on Radio National with Julian Morrow saying that while he didn’t enjoy the gag he thought Jackie Kelly may like to audition for the Chaser now that her political career is officially dead-in-the-water.

What is funny, though, is that it was a Liberal Party insider who, disgusted with the plan, tipped off Labor about the letter-box-drop and Labor Party workers caught the guilty ones on camera, leaflets in hand, before delivering the story to the Prime Minister’s favourite newspaper, the popular tabloid, The Daily Telegraph.

More pertinently, Jeff Egan has retained a defamation lawyer and issued the following statement: “"I have been falsely accused of distributing unauthorised material. I categorically deny distributing any unauthorised material. I intend to clear my name.'' Now, he’s not denying his involvement in the fiasco, his point is that the material WAS authorised by the Liberal Party despite the Prime Minister’s assertions to the contrary.

And, the Liberal Party has form on this. As reported by the The World Today (TWT) minutes before the PM took to the podium. Ken Higgs, worked on Jackie Kelly’s election campaign in 2001 and he claims he was instructed to distribute fake ‘how to vote cards’ by Liberal Party officials at polling booths in the tight electorate. The cards, he says were designed to trick supporters of a resident’s action group campaigning for the retention of the Australian Defence Industries (ADI)site into voting for Jackie Kelly. According to Mr Higgs, Liberal booth workers were also instructed to change out of their ‘Vote Liberal’ t-shirts and into ‘Save ADI’ t-shirts while distributing the fake how to vote cards which told ADI supporters to ‘vote 1’ Jackie Kelly. Mr Higgs claims the plan to distribute the false cards was cooked up at a meeting he attended where a member of the NSW Liberal Party Executive and members of Ms Kelly’s campaign team were also present. Asked why he was going public at this point about the issue, Mr Higgs told TWT “I thought it was over but I see today that they’re still up to their same manipulative little tricks…it’s just wrong; totally over the top!”

At the very least, the pamphlets constitute another breach of the Commonwealth Electoral Act and the matter has been referred to the Australian Federal Police by the Australian Electoral Commission for further investigation.

Meanwhile, John Howard told the Press Club inquisitors he was satisfied with a statement from one of the exposed pamphleteers that the Liberal Party candidate in Lyndsay, Karen Chijoff, was not aware of the plan and therefore would not be disendorsed. And, to think he disendorsed Pauline Hanson in 1996 for uttering anti-Aboriginal sentiments he later adopted as policy? Ironically, given the Prime Minister's anti-feminist stance on women in the workforce and his 1950's world view of marriage, he chastised reporters for suggesting Ms Chijoff should be judged by her husband's behaviour because to do so would be to undermine her independence. Mr Howard also failed to specifically respond to questions about just who knew what and when at Liberal Party headquarters.

Lies. Deception. Broken non-core promises. Racist propaganda. Who do you trust?