Deceiving the Electors
Wednesday, March 20, 2002
Dear Editor,
"OrganizationName",
I found it difficult to buy in to the "children-overboard" debate, because I couldn't see what difference it would make. Desperate boat people do desperate things, but you can't base a refugee policy on an incident, be it true or false.
It is only now that I am aroused to comment. Why? Because a myth is being constructed out of thin air. We're getting a regular trickle of media comments to the effect that the last federal election was falsely won, based on a false report of children overboard.
Now, if we are going to start invalidating elections on the grounds of misinformation, we have a much more serious case, that will embarrass the Labor propagandists more than their enemies.
I refer to the last two months of last year's federal election campaign. There were several articles in papers designed to convince readers that more government money went to private schools than to state-run schools.
People within the school industry know this is preposterous, but others were taken in by this deceit. Evidence of this is the passionate but deluded letters to the editor from people who - rightly - felt outraged that taxpayer's money should be distributed in such an unfair way.
How many votes went against the government as a result of this calculated misinformation campaign?
Yours faithfully,
Philip O'Carroll
(Administrator, Fitzroy Community School)