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What were you watching on TV when the planes crashed?

September 7 2002

One year on, Australians have gained a sense of perspective about that dreadful event on the other side of the world, writes Shaun Carney.

A long-time neighbour, around retirement age, with a background of voting Labor, pulled me up in the street a week or so after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington last year. With her bag of groceries hanging by her side, she was anxious to talk.

She was distressed. She hadn't been able to sleep since she saw what happened in New York. What sort of people could do that? And they were trying to come here. On the boats. She had never liked John Howard before but now she thought he was doing a great job, keeping the boat people out.

The federal election was still a couple of weeks away from being called but it was obvious to me after that conversation that the vote would be a mere formality. If this woman, who over the years had enjoyed telling me how much she disliked Jeff Kennett and the Liberals generally, felt this way, then Howard had already been re-elected.

And that's how it turned out, of course. The Howard Government's politically astute handling of the crisis caused by the Tampa picking up several hundred boat people in late August set up the election victory. The horror of September 11 clinched it.

There was a range of reasons for Howard's third successive election victory but September 11 was surely highest on the list. How did the terror attacks change Australian politics? Above all, they ensured Howard would achieve his life's ambition: to sit just to Sir Robert Menzies' right in the pantheon of Liberal leaders, a political lion who turned his fortunes around to win a third term and smash his Labor opponent's career.

It is the fashion to accept that "everything changed" in those few hours on September 11. In Australia, some things changed but the all-pervading influence that was forecast back then - the fear of being in tall buildings, of travelling by air, of drinking the water, of utter lawlessness - has not eventuated.

From the Australian perspective, the September 11 attacks were chiefly a television event. It is said of the assassination of JFK that everybody who was alive then will remember where they were when they heard the news. The twist on September 11 is that most people will probably remember what they were watching on TV when there was a live cross to the American satellite link (in Melbourne the main choices were either The West Wing or Talking Footy).

Relatively few Australians have visited New York, but thanks to television they feel they know the city. For that reason, and because the images - witnessed in real time, right there in our homes - were so graphic, the immediate impact on the Australian consciousness was immense.

Thus when Australian military personnel were committed to the multinational assault on the Taliban in Afghanistan, public support for our involvement was pretty much unanimous.

However, as the months have passed, the September 11 attacks have found a place in a broader perspective, one in which they were a coordinated but singular action against a handful of targets on the other side of the world.

This does not mean that the horror has not had a lasting effect on many, perhaps most, Australians. But it seems clear that many voters are now conscious of the need to distinguish between the responses required from the United States and from Australia.

The temperature on the issue has fallen. A signal moment in the debate about Australia's involvement in a possible American-led invasion of Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein came in the middle of last month.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, having spent several weeks continually stepping up his rhetorical assaults on Labor by portraying it as an appeaser of terrorists, found himself seriously on the wrong side of public opinion.

Employing the same we-are-tougher-than-Labor approach that had worked so well for the government in the lead-up to the election, Downer accused Labor leader Simon Crean of talking like Saddam. Unfortunately for Downer, new focus group research was coming in. This showed that most Australians were cool on involvement in an invasion of Iraq until more evidence was provided. Some also expressed concern about Downer being the one who was prosecuting the war on the nation's behalf.

Within days, the government was softening its stance, something it has continued to do ever since. Within weeks, Australia has gone from being the most devoted partner in an assault on Saddam to a sceptical "maybe". Meanwhile, Crean - sensing that for the first time in a long time the ALP had better judged the public sentiment than the government - has gone the other way, toughening up his rhetoric and going so far as to describe Downer as a fool.

This could have marked the end of the government's unrestrained use of external events to bolster its political standing. But for both sides of politics, such situations carry a substantial element of risk. The government would not need to take the softly, softly line if Osama bin Laden carries out another attack on the West. In those circumstances, it would be Labor that would be stranded, probably being portrayed with some success by the government as having provided succour to the enemy.

This, more than anything, is the lasting corollary of September 11 on public life in Australia. Not since the Vietnam War have security and defence so palpably and consistently been the stuff of domestic political debate.

Defence spending, which re-entered the public consciousness after Australia's contribution to the peacekeeping effort in East Timor in 1999, is, after September 11, acknowledged and accepted as a budgetary priority.

And the desirability and nature of the diplomatic and strategic alliance with America - undeniably stronger right now because of the political affinities of the Bush and Howard administrations - is likely to become a dominant issue in Australia's public discourse perhaps for the remainder of this decade.

Shaun Carney is an associate editor

of The Age.



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