At the risk of infringing copyright, this is the full text of an article that appears in the latest edition of the New York Times:
By SETH MYDANS
Three sweet little girls, Eman, Zahra and Fatimah, stared earnestly from the front pages, party ribbons in their hair, their dark eyes shining — three of the nearly 400 refugees who drowned last month on a refugee boat heading through a stormy sea to an Australia that would not have them.
Readers reacted with a cry of sympathy, but the two men who want to lead Australia held firm. In a parliamentary election set for this Saturday — policy talk aside — the focus has narrowed to one emotive question: who has the harder heart?
"We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come," says Prime Minister John Howard, over and over again, in what has become a leitmotif of the campaign, and a successful one.
No more boat people. The loss of the three little girls, and hundreds of other asylum seekers, he said, should not be blamed on him.
Mr. Howard, 62, who is seeking his third three-year term, was lagging badly in the polls until the last week of August, when he refused entry to 433, mostly Afghan, refugees who had been rescued by a Norwegian freighter.
"These people will never set foot on Australian soil," he declared, and sent them on to the distant, tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru. His poll numbers soared and his challenger, Kim Beazley, 52, a former defense minister, took the obvious political step. He concurred heartily.
"What I see at the moment is an auction among the political leaders as to who's the toughest," said Fred Chaney, formerly a minister in a Liberal government. And toughness has clearly found a receptive audience.
This week, as new polls showed Mr. Beazley closing the gap again, Mr. Howard upped the ante. "You don't know who's coming," he said, "and you don't know whether they do have terrorist links or not."
Words like this touch fundamental insecurities in a nation founded two centuries ago by British convict exiles and reshaped since then by successive waves of immigration.
"This policy is obviously playing on fear," said Elaine Thompson, a political scientist at the University of New South Wales, "fear of the unknown and the stranger and the foreigner, and now an additional frisson of terrorism. I think the fears have to do with the rapidity of change that is going on in Australia, both socially and with the change in demographics of the population."
It was just 30 years ago that the government revoked its "white Australia" policy and started accepting immigrants from Asia. Today, Asians make up nearly half of Australia's immigrants and 5 percent of its population of 19 million. In 25 years, according to some projections, they could make up a quarter of the population.
Immigration is not the only issue in the campaign, of course.
Mr. Beazley and the Labor Party promise better support for health and education and simplification of a complex new sales tax. Mr. Howard and the Liberal Party have a successful economic record to run on, with low inflation, modest growth and a tolerable level of unemployment.
Though many commentators deplore the turn the campaign has taken, political analysts say a decisive swing vote may hinge on the policy that the candidates call "border security."
It is a rich constituency that was uncovered five years ago by a fish- and-chips shop owner, Pauline Hanson, who burst onto the scene demanding an end to Asian immigration and won a seat in Parliament.
"I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians," Mrs. Hanson said in her first speech in Parliamentar, though annual immigration then, as now, was about 70,000, half the level of the late 1980's. "They have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do not assimilate," she said of the Asians. "A truly multicultural country can never be strong or united."
Her attitude today could be described as smug. "A lot of people are actually saying that I am John Howard's adviser," she said recently, to Mr. Howard's embarrassment, "because he's picking up a lot of the policies and issues that I have raised and spoken about over the years."
The latest fears focus on people from the Middle East who have arrived in increasing numbers over the past two years from places like Iran and Iraq as well as Afghanistan, the homeland of the three little girls in the photograph.
"The softer we get, the more they will come," said The Sun-Herald tabloid in support of Mr. Howard's ban. So far, however, the policy seems to have had little effect.
In September and October, eight more boats carrying 288 refugees arrived in Australian waters, almost four times the number during the same period last year. Those that refused to turn back have mostly been sent on to Nauru.
"It used to be perceived as the threat of an Asian invasion, the yellow peril, and now it's the Muslim peril," said David Williamson, a leading playwright, in an influential commentary. "What are they afraid of? That we will be swamped with Muslims who will rape our women and commit acts of terrorism?"
Before the government began diverting them to Pacific islands, most asylum seekers were housed in harsh camps around the country which now hold about 4,000 people, mostly from the Middle East.
Maqsood Alshams, 36, was released last year from 16 months in one of the camps and is now appealing an expulsion order. Australia's cold shoulder to immigrants is inhumane and illegal, he said.
"Most of the people in there have faced some kind of torture or trauma or persecution back in their respective countries," Mr. Alshams said. "They are legitimate asylum seekers.
"They take the biggest risk of their life crossing the ocean, with no assurance that they won't drown," he said. "They are desperate. It's not a holiday coming to this country."
Some immigrants who have already established themselves take an opposite view, however. "If they come in the front door, they are welcome here," said Sid Chidiak, an artist whose family came from Lebanon. "But if they jump the fence they are not welcome."
Immigrants like Mr. Chidiak have generally found Australia to be a congenial new homeland, however.
"It would be wrong to interpret Australia as racist or intolerant," said Gerard Henderson, who heads a policy group called the Sydney Institute.
"Historically in Australia there has been opposition to newcomers, as there has been in most democratic immigrant societies," he said. "But it's fair to say that for those who make it here, it's a pretty tolerant, accepting society with a high level of intermarriage and low level of ethnic crime."
Though whites still dominate, cities like Sydney are a mixture of races. Asians are finding their place, as did Greeks, Italians and other Europeans after World War II. The Australian Election Commission is advertizing Saturday's vote in 26 languages, the most it ever has.
As the vote approaches this weekend, analysts have placed it in the category of "too close to call." And party strategists have begun to worry about a backlash from what they call the "bleeding-heart vote."
The language of outrage from many Australians in the past few days has certainly been vivid: Barbarism, hideousness, inhumanity, our worst instincts, obscene, callous, brutal, myopic stubbornness. Insensitive, hairy-chested approach. Absolutely ashamed to be an Australian. Never thought I would live to see the day.
These are the voices of the elite and the articulate. But Mr. Howard and Mr. Beazley are still betting that they know their constituencies.
Using the hyperbole that makes democracy fun, a columnist named Catherine Lumby talked of detergents: "The difference between them is the difference between Omo and Rinso. Both are running on the promise that they'll keep Australia whiter."
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