False Claims About Boat People Could Sink Australian Leader

One of the most controversial issues of the last Australian elections has returned to haunt the prime minister, John Howard, as support for his coalition slumps in the run-up to federal polls.

Mr Howard faces the threat of a second Senate inquiry into claims that he lied to the public over the "children overboard" affair.

False claims that asylum seekers sailing from Indonesia to northern Australia were throwing children into the sea in their attempts to enter Australia emerged two days after the start of the election campaign, on October 7 2001, based initially on a confused report from a naval officer.

A correct account of the encounter between Australian coastguards and the would-be refugees reached the prime minister's office three days later, but Mr Howard continued to back the children overboard story in the month leading up to the November 10 polls. "In my mind there is no uncertainty because I don't disbelieve the advice I was given by defence," he told reporters.

Photographs purporting to show coastguards rescuing children who had been thrown off the ship Olong were released by the government on October 10. It later emerged that the pictures showed coastguards rescuing people from the ship after it sank while being towed from Australian waters by the navy.

The opposition Senate leader, John Faulkner, yesterday indicated the upper house would investigate claims that civil servants had been gagged during a 2002 Senate inquiry into the episode. A new inquiry would be likely to report shortly before elections expected this October.

Mr Howard rejected the plan as politically motivated. "The Senate is being used by the anti-government parties to score political points against me," he told 2UE radio.

Fresh attacks on the prime minister's credibility were sparked on Monday after Mike Scrafton, a former bureaucrat in the defence department, claimed to have warned Mr Howard on November 7, on the eve of the leader's speech to the National Press Club, that there was no evidence for the children overboard story.

On Tuesday night the former aide passed a lie detector test on TV, and yesterday two other people connected with the episode came forward to challenge the government's version of events. The former defence public affairs chief Jenny McKenry told ABC radio that Mr Scrafton's account matched her conversations with him on the morning of the press club speech. "He told me that there was no evidence to support the children overboard story, and that is what he had conveyed to the prime minister," she said.

Laura Whittle, a sailor who appeared in photos of the incident, said the only child she had seen held over the side of the Olong was being helped by the father: "The man was wanting to get the child into our inflatable boat to safety."

Mr Howard rejected suggestions that he should also take a lie detector test. "The Australian people are the great lie detectors of Australian politics," he said.