Anti-Muslim race baiting in the Australian elections

Well, the Australian federal elections are on Saturday and the incumbent Liberal government has been staring down the barrel of a crushing defeat for a while now.  I always feel compelled to point out to overseas readers that the Liberal party are the dominant conservative party in Australia (given the generally understood meaning of “liberal” in political terms).  Anyway, they’ve been trying every trick in the book but they’ve been unable to dent the popularity of the opposition Labor Leader, Kevin Rudd.

It seems desperation has set in and some really dirty tricks are coming out.  The seat of Lindsay is in outer western Sydney and could easily change hands from the Liberals (who currently hold it) to Labor.  So in desperation, the Liberal Campaign team decided to play to the lowest common denominator and inflame anti-Muslim sentiments.

They falsified and distributed a flyer that purported to come from a non-existent radical Muslim group.  The flyer proclaimed the group unswerving support for the Labor party including quite despicable (and untrue) references to Labor supporting forgiveness for the Bali bombers.  Here’s a link to a news story including a copy of the flyer.

To his credit, Liberal leader John Howard has unequivocally condemned the tactic.  This is in stark contrast to, say, the conduct of GW Bush when Republican operatives have used blatant lies to slander his opponents.  But this is still going to hurt him.  It just reeks of desperation and for a man who’s always staked his reputation on honesty… well, this doesn’t look very honest.

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Australian Federal Election – Arrogance and Lies

Consider this my application for a job with the Australian Labor Party. I love doing something this partisan because someone always blows a blood vessel because they can’t tolerate the idea that you’d take a position that contradicts theirs. It’ll be fun to see a few people humiliate themselves with idiotic comments.

For those who don’t know Australian politics, here’s the background to this video. The first one pictured is John Howard, current Australian Prime Minister. The second one is his deputy, Peter Costello. Howard has been PM for more than 10 years and he made a deal with his deputy to retire and hand over power. Then he broke that deal.

In their public spat, Howard was called a liar for not keeping his word and Costello was called arrogant for not waiting. The rest kind of wrote itself.

I did it in the stereotype election campaign ad style – slow zoom on photos with dramatic music. So what do you think – do I have a future as a political lobbyist?

And I LOVE the way the thumbnail came out.