The focus of Australia's fledgling election campaign returned to the honesty of Prime Minister John Howard on Wednesday as an inquiry heard accusations he had lied to voters on the eve of his 2001 re-election.
Credibility has emerged as a key issue ahead of the October 9 poll, along with Australia's robust economy, national security and support for the US-led war in Iraq.
Centre-left opposition Labour has seized on the claims that Howard lied over a key immigration issue just days before the 2001 poll.
Former defence adviser Mike Scrafton told a parliamentary inquiry on Wednesday that the prime minister had lied in 2001 by persisting with a story that asylum seekers threw children off a boat into the sea, despite being told by Scrafton it was false.
"I don't know if you have ever been in the position of having to explain to a prime minister that the position he has been taking for a month is wrong," Scrafton told an upper house Senate committee of his recollection of the "children overboard" affair.
"That is not something somebody with my length of time in the public service would ever forget. I'm absolutely clear that what I have said ... represents exactly what I said to the prime minister in terms of substance," he said.
Scrafton, now retired, first made his accusations in a letter to a national newspaper last month, sparking the credibility row.
Howard's reputation was dealt a further blow by a media report late on Tuesday that Senator George Brandis, a member of Howard's own Liberal Party, had described his leader as "a lying rodent" over the same issue.
Brandis, who strongly denies the report, was part of the multi-party inquiry which grilled Scrafton on Wednesday.
"I'm telling the Australian people I did not lie on this issue and I'm also saying that the Australian people believe we should debate the future and not the past," Howard, whose government is seeking a fourth consecutive term, told reporters.
Comments
Comments are closed.