Editorial: Australia: Rumbles from Down Under.(Brief Article)(Editorial)

John Howard's comfortable victory over the Australian Labour party in the recent election has been little noticed in our media-even though it was the third victory in a row for the conservative Liberal-Country coalition, achieved against phenomenal odds, and bearing great significance for the politics of America and the rest of the First World.

And that is understandable because in the eyes of international political elites it was the wrong victory for the wrong party on the wrong issue. Three months ago, Howard's party was trailing by as much as 20 percent in the polls; the economy was not delivering the strong growth generally needed for government election victories.

Then the SS Tampa, a Norwegian-owned ship, was seized in Indonesian waters by its Afghan and Pakistani passengers and ordered to head for Australia. The international community, led by such "eminent persons" as the U.N. commissioner for human rights, Mary Robinson, at once appealed to Australia to admit these "asylum seekers"-even though under international law the ship should have headed not for Australia but for the nearest Indonesian port. Most governments echoed these appeals. So did church spokesmen, "human rights" advocates, and the great and the good in Australia itself.

Ignoring these pressures, Howard instructed the Australian navy to prevent the boat from entering Australian waters-and promptly initiated a major political campaign to defend Australia against migrant- smuggling. He argued that, whatever international law said, independent nation-states had a right to control their own borders.

After September 11-when terrorists exploited loopholes in immigration policy to murder thousands-these ...