To Canberra's continuing irritation, the scandal of the Norwegian freighter Tampa will not go away. It now turns out that the Australian government's election victory last year may have been conceived in deceit and born in sin.

To the evident distress of the highly professional Australian military forces, false statements were made about their encounter with the refugees aboard the Tampa. Parents aboard the ship, it was said in the lead-up to the election, had thrown children overboard to force the Australian Navy to rescue them. Australia did not need and would not admit such despicable people, declared the stout-hearted prime minister. Doubts were stilled with the publication of a navy photograph showing the children in water.

Well, we now know that their boat had already sunk and that they needed rescuing. Photographs exist to prove all this but the distortions of truth were maintained throughout the election campaign until election day. In addition, conventions governing the "collateral" collection of domestic-sourced data by Australia's intelligence services may also have been breached. The legitimacy of the government's mandate is in doubt, and the prime minister's future is being called into question by political opponents and some independent commentators.