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If you sat through this evening’s rather sycophantic Howard Years on ABC1, you may have noticed that, according to Costello, John Howard was all for preferencing Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party in the 1998 Federal Election. Nice. Well, were their policies really so different? “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.” The reason Howard’s line became infamous, of course, is that refugees were treated like prisoners – and in fact had, in many instances, less rights – and many were returned to regimes where they faced almost certain death.

On Wednesday, SBS is screening a doco which promises to be anything but sycophantic towards the Howard government. A Well-Founded Fear follows the fates of some of those political refugees and their families. It is reviewed in The Age’s Green Guide (13/11/08) by Jodie Pfarr:

There are even claims that the Government used false passports to deport detainees to their or other countries. A report into the treatment and fate of over 250 deported refugees is to be presented to the Government and the United Nations. That will not be our finest hour.

But how many of us will actually watch A Well-Founded Fear? Rather less than the 21 million Jodie Pfarr would like, I suspect. There’s plenty of US pap on offer – Criminal Minds, The Mentalist, House – and the trend is towards custom video channels online, where any news is likely to be of the E variety and the choice for hot doco perhaps a behind the scenes with The Veronicas.

One person I can pretty much guarantee won’t be watching is John Winston Howard.

► A Well-Founded Fear screens Wednesday, 19th November at 8.30pm on SBS.

Image: The Age