CANBERRA: Conservative Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s comfortable win of a third term in office in Saturday’s elections was due largely to his creation, and exploitation, of fears about boatloads of asylum seekers heading for Australia’s shores in rickety wooden boats from Indonesia.

The federal election, held on Saturday, saw Howard’s Liberal-National Party coalition gain a swing of two per cent and at least hold the same number of seats which, combined with independent members, could give it a national 10-seat majority in Parliament.

Last week, Howard’s Liberal Party ran full-page advertisements in major newspapers saying “we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come. A vote for your local Liberal team member protects our borders”.

The use by Howard’s coalition of voters’ fears about immigration was such that even revelations in the last days of the poll campaign — that claims made a month ago by Howard and several of his senior ministers that asylum seekers had thrown children overboard from a boat sailing into Australian waters were fabricated — did not prevent its victory.

In fact, instead of damaging Howard, both Labour and Liberal strategists believe the revelations perversely helped him by shifting the focus of debate away from Labour’s preferred health and education issues and back to Howard’s focus on the number of boats arriving on Australia’s northern shores.

Claiming victory at the Liberal Party celebrations at an up-market hotel in Sydney, Howard dispensed with the divisive rhetoric and appealed for unity in the face of global uncertainty following the Sept 11 terror attacks in the United States.

“It requires all of us of goodwill and of faith in freedom and a belief in the great principles upon which this nation has been built that we come together, we bind together in unity,” he said.

The Labour Opposition, which needed a swing of just 0.8 per cent to win government, fell victim to a pincer movement on the refugee issue.

Earlier this year, Labour held a commanding lead in the polls and looked certain to win after the Liberals suffered a string of humiliating defeats in state elections in Western Australia, Queensland, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory.

All that changed when in September, Howard dispatched Special Air Services troops to prevent 430 asylum seekers — rescued from a sinking fishing boat by a Norwegian container ship — from landing on remote Christmas Island. While the move drew international condemnation, it dramatically boosted Howard’s electoral stock here at home.

With the Labour Opposition reluctant to agree to support the government’s hardline position of turning away boats of asylum seekers, it lost support from conservative working-class voters to Howard’s coalition.

Labour Party strategist Bob McMullen acknowledges that Labour’s ambivalent position cost its support on both the right and left. “The alienated coalition voters that voted (the anti-immigration) One Nation party have all just marched back. There has also been a protest vote that has gone to the Greens,” he said.

But while Howard’s coalition has won a comfortable majority in the lower house, neither it or the Labour Opposition has a majority in the Senate.

Because its members are elected under a proportional representation system, minor parties have a better chance of gaining representation, requiring just 14.5 per cent to win a seat. —Dawn/InterPress Service.