Using Fear and Uncertainty to get votes
I’m writing this as John Howard is meeting with the Governor General, presumably to call a federal election.
In the last 24 hours, I’ve been reflecting and wondering about the campaign we are going to see. I’m thinking the coalition will probably try to use fear, uncertainty and “national security”to convince the Australian public to stick with the coalition. The general idea is keep the population afraid and then they’ll vote to keep the current government.
So, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the following from the coalition during the campaign:
- Raised terror alerts, but with no specific targets or dates. See this graph of Bush popularity and timing of terror alerts.
- More ‘regional threat’ stuff from Foreign Minister Downer, like the silly outburst a couple of weeks ago about North Korea having nuclear missiles that can reach Australia.
- A few convenient quick arrests of ‘terror suspects’
- Some subtle stuff suggesting that Latham’s not a safe bet for the country at this time.
to show that there is a threat right here.
Of course, using fear like this doesn’t work forever. If the coalition has already pushed the buttons too many times (like in the last federal election), then Australians may well see it all as more tricky lies. We’ll see.
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