ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the socio-political effect of the issue on the Australian public and ways in which Australians have been encouraged to take up their responses as elements of cultural memory, and hence incorporate them into their sense of national identity. Among the many statements made during the campaign regarding the moral implications of throwing children overboard, Prime Minster Howard asserted that "We are a humane people". In making this statement, he was invoking a well-known national quality in which Australians take pride: compassionate readiness to reach out to those in distress. Yet, there is ample evidence that this is based on a false cultural memory that contributes to an equally false component of national identity. In his analysis of photography as a core component of criminal investigation and criminological scrutiny, Eamonn Carrabine notes that "the camera routinely aestheticizes all that it pictures".
