Dark Victory: The Military Campaign to Re-Elect the Prime Minister

Description

They put lives at risk, broke the law and shattered conventions. They drew the Navy and the Army into the heart of an election campaign, muzzled the press and outwitted the courts. They defied the United Nations, antagonised the country's nearest neighbour and bribed poverty stricken Pacific States. They closed Australia to boatpeople refugees - and they won a mighty election victory. This is the inside story of the "Tampa" crisis and the political strategy that powered it; of how John Howard, who was all but finished, seized on the issue of "border protection" to start a war on immigration and bring himself back from the political dead. Award-winning writer David Marr investigative journalist Marian Wilkinson burrow deep into the world of spin-doctors, bureaucrats and the military to reveal the whole story, play by play - from the stricken asylum seekers' first sight of the red dot on the horizon that was the "Tampa" to John Howard singing the national anthem at his election victory celebrations. The book aims to bring to light the manipulation of the public, the mutability of the press and the machinations of one government in its all-consuming lust for power.

Marian Wilkinson is one of Australia's leading journalists and the author of The Fixer a revealing account of the life and career of Labor's Graham Richardson. She has worked as a senior reporter for the Australian, deputy editor of the Sydney Morning Herald and executive producer of Four Corners. She is currently the Washington correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age. David Marr is the award-winning author of Patrick White: A Life Barwick and The High Price of Heaven. In a career spanning thirty years, he has written for The Bulletin and the Sydney Morning Herald, edited the National Times and reported for Four Corners. He is now presenter of ABC-TV's Media Watch.