Boats For Votes: How Tampa Incident Was Used For Electoral Gains In 2001

Located in the southern hemisphere, Australia owes a separate continent. Although Australia is surrounded by oceans and with few bordering countries, it is closely related to the rest of the world. It attracts migrants from all over the world to settle down, among them are refugees seeking asylum in Australia. Refugees went to seek asylum in Australia ever since 1850. The history of Australia to voluntarily receive asylum seekers can be traced back to the 1970s. With the surging number of displaced people and the improvement in transportation, Australia has been taken as an ideal sanctuary for asylum seekers as other countries put caps on the number of asylum seekers accepted.The growing number of refugees to Australia became the concern of Australian public as their arrival triggered social problems such as unemployment. However, different governments adopted different policies on this issue. The asylum seeker issue has not been noticed by candidates as a major concern in elections until the MV Tampa incident in 2001. The hardline policy adopted by the Liberal Party gained more support, which contributed to its electoral victory. The Howard government turned the immigration issue into an election issue by appealing to national anxiety and national identify awareness in the public. His government succeeded in constructing the image of asylum seekers on MV Tampa and the public were attracted to believe in the construction. Howard government also adopted hardline policy and guaranteed more supporters and his electoral success. It turned out that Howard government's approval ratings rapidly rose, rising above 53 percent. Labor, on the other hand, did not show a clear stance as before and blundered away a good opportunity to beat Liberal Party in the election.This paper examined Howard government's draconian hardline policies from two aspects. First, Howard government's construction of asylum seekers as "inhuman and dehumanized being", "queue jumpers" and "illegal immigrants", and use of the construction to expand its voter base in the federal election by appealing to public anxiety and the fear over terrorism. Second, Howard government constructed the image of asylum seekers as "other" and led the voters to believe in the construction by appealing to national identity awareness.The study of MV Tampa incident is put in the context of electoral politics. This paper will elaborate how Howard government constructed asylum seekers and led the public to believe in the construction through the use of popular anxiety and national identity awareness, in the hope of revealing the significance of the hardline policy on the success of Howard government in 2001.