Howard feels heat over boat claims
From Grant Holloway, CNN Sydney
 |  A picture of asylum seekers being rescued which the government erroneously claimed showed children had been thrown overboard. |
| |
|  VIDEO |
 An ex-aide to John Howard says the Australian leader may have misled the public.
|
|
SYDNEY, Australia (CNN) -- Prime Minister John Howard is facing political pressure Monday after a former top civil servant released damaging claims that suggest the Australian leader may have misled the public in the weeks before the last national election.
The claims center on when and how much the prime minister knew about incorrect reports that asylum seekers on a boat headed for Australia had deliberately thrown their children overboard.
Howard and several senior ministers made much of the reports in the lead-up to the national polls in 2001 to bolster the government's tough anti asylum-seeker stance, but subsequent investigations showed no such incident occurred.
In a letter to The Australian national newspaper, published Monday, Mike Scrafton, a former senior adviser to the then minister of defense, said he had advised the prime minister, over the course of three phone conversations, that the "children overboard" reports were most likely to be inaccurate.
Howard has always maintained he was acting on the advice of the defense department in saying that children had been thrown overboard and that he was not made aware of the change of position until after the November 10 election.
But in Monday's letter, Scrafton -- who was prevented by the government from testifying at a parliamentary inquiry into the affair -- said the phone conversations took place on November 7, three days before the election took place.
Howard repeated the children overboard claims on several occasions after November 7, including during a television interview on the morning of the election.
A spokesman for the prime minister has disputed Scrafton's version of events, saying the doubts expressed referred only to an Australian navy videotape of the reported incident proving inconclusive.
 Prime Minister Howard stands by his earlier statements on the issue. | |
In a statement released later Monday, Howard said he stood by previous statements he had made on this matter.
In the statement the prime minister also questioned why Scrafton was only now raising this issue two and a half years after the events occurred.
Scrafton, who no longer works as a civil servant, said he had released the letter to "add to the public record" a small footnote to the history of the "children overboard affair" at a time when the "vital issue of public truth in government" was being discussed.
Scrafton also said in the letter he believed "public comments on controversial matters by senior public servants should only be made with reluctance and then only in exceptional circumstances."
The letter comes as Howard prepares to announce an election date -- most likely for mid October -- in which his conservative coalition government will seek a fourth consecutive term in power.
The revival of the "children overboard" issue is likely to serve as a distraction for the government as it tries to sell the electorate a positive story of its achievements in what is shaping up as a tight race.
Australia's main opposition Labor party leader Mark Latham described the latest claims as "extraordinary."
"[I'm] outraged, absolutely outraged, that the Australian people could be so badly deceived and misled in the days leading up to the last election and the prime minister's covered it up ever since," Latham told media.
He said Howard had been "badly caught out" by the release of the letter.
