The political landscape of Australia in early 2001 was precarious for the incumbent Howard government. After two terms, the Coalition was performing poorly in opinion polls, with a leaked report from its own party president, Shane Stone, describing the government as “mean, tricky and out of touch”. Facing a likely electoral defeat, the government was in a state of profound internal vulnerability. The strategic intent behind the government’s subsequent actions can be understood through this lens of political survival, where a manufactured external crisis became the solution to an internal one.
The turning point began in August 2001 with the Tampa affair. When the Norwegian freighter MV Tampa rescued 433 asylum seekers and sought to land them at Australia’s Christmas Island, the Howard government refused permission. The government’s public justification was the defense of national sovereignty, with Prime Minister John Howard declaring, “we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come” [1]. This rhetoric escalated into a five-day standoff, culminating in the deployment of 45 Australian Special Air Service (SAS) troops to board the civilian vessel and prevent it from proceeding [1]. The systemic impact of this decision was profound; it militarized a humanitarian issue and established a precedent for using national security as a justification for overriding international maritime law and humanitarian norms.
This event provided the template for the government’s re-election strategy, which was supercharged by the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. The government capitalized on the global atmosphere of fear with the ‘Children Overboard’ affair, which began on 7 October 2001. Senior government ministers, including the Prime Minister, then-Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock, and then-Defence Minister Peter Reith, publicly and repeatedly claimed that asylum seekers aboard another vessel, SIEV 4, had thrown their children into the sea [2]. Howard stated on talkback radio, “I can’t comprehend how genuine refugees would throw their children overboard”.
These claims were false. A subsequent Senate Select Committee inquiry in 2002 found definitively that no children were thrown overboard and, crucially, that senior public servants and military officials had informed the government that the claims were unsubstantiated or false prior to the election [2]. The photographs used to support the government’s narrative were taken after the vessel, which was unseaworthy, began to sink [2]. Despite this, the narrative proved overwhelmingly effective. The government was re-elected on 10 November 2001 with an increased majority, running on a platform where national security was paramount [3]. The success of this strategy legitimized a hawkish outlook and led to the codification of the hardline ‘Pacific Solution’, creating a long-term system of offshore detention that had significant financial and human costs.
The period from 2007 to 2013 was one of unprecedented political turmoil, creating an environment of strategic distraction ideal for external influence. This “coup era” saw Australia cycle through three prime ministerships in three years, fostering a perception of instability [4]. It was during this period that the “hum”—a disproportionate and illogical backlash against ‘greater good’ policies—became undeniable.
In May 2010, the Rudd government proposed the 40% Resource Super Profits Tax (RSPT), a classic ‘greater good’ policy designed to ensure the Australian public received a greater share of the profits from the exploitation of its non-renewable resources during a massive, China-driven mining boom [5, 6].
The reaction from the mining industry was immediate and overwhelming. A massive AUD 22 million advertising campaign, funded by major mining companies and coordinated by the Minerals Council of Australia, was launched to attack the tax. This “ad war” saturated the media with narratives of economic devastation. The strategic intent was not merely to defeat a single tax, but to establish a corporate veto over sovereign government policy. This campaign was a key factor in the internal party instability that led to Kevin Rudd’s removal as Prime Minister in June 2010 [7]. His successor, Julia Gillard, immediately entered negotiations with the major miners (BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, and Xstrata), resulting in a significantly weakened Minerals Resource Rent Tax (MRRT). The final MRRT was so compromised that Treasury estimated it raised only a fraction of its projected revenue before being repealed by the Abbott government in 2014, representing a net loss to the Australian taxpayer when accounting for associated concessions.
Similarly, the Gillard government’s carbon pricing scheme, introduced in 2011, was met with a ferocious “scare campaign” from an alliance of industry groups and the political opposition under Tony Abbott, who famously pledged in “blood” to repeal what he branded a “toxic” and “useless, destructive” tax. The campaign successfully framed the policy as a direct attack on the cost of living. This narrative proved politically potent, contributing to the Abbott-led Coalition’s victory in the 2013 election, and the tax was repealed in 2014 [8]. This tactic of a corporate-funded “scare campaign” against a public good policy has become a recurring signature, seen in other contexts such as the tobacco industry’s fight against plain packaging laws in Australia, which they claimed would lead to a massive increase in illicit trade—a claim that was later proven to be unfounded [9].
A pivotal moment in this landscape was the passage of the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2005. This legislation, enacted by the Howard government, dramatically increased the threshold for the public disclosure of political donations from $1,500 to over $10,000, with the new figure indexed to inflation. This significantly reduced transparency and created the architecture for “dark money” to influence politics.
Disclosed political donations from the mining industry to the major parties surged, peaking at nearly $3.8 million in 2010-11, the year of the RSPT fight, with 81% going to the Coalition [10].
The “revolving door”—the movement of personnel between government and the industries they once regulated—institutionalizes the network of influence. Former ministers and senior advisors leverage their inside knowledge and personal relationships to provide privileged access for their new corporate employers [11]. Immediately after leaving politics in 2016, former Trade Minister Andrew Robb, who had overseen aspects of the foreign investment review process, accepted a high-level consultant position with Landbridge Group, the Chinese company that had been granted the controversial 99-year lease of the Port of Darwin, with a reported salary of $880,000 per year [12]. Other prominent examples include Christopher Pyne (former Defence Minister) consulting for defense firms, Martin Ferguson (former Resources Minister) joining the gas lobby group APPEA, and Ian Macfarlane (former Industry Minister) becoming CEO of the Queensland Resources Council [13].