The turn the debate on asylum seekers has taken in the lead-up to the federal election has led to comparisons with the Tampa crisis and fears we are in the thick of Tampa 2.0.

To be sure, fear remains as powerful a currency as it was in 2001. The prime minister’s recent scaremongering language suggests the government will deploy the Tampa playbook which goes along the lines of “How to use race politics to get votes and wedge your opponents”. We are not in the thick of Tampa 2.0 though.

The circumstances of the Tampa crisis have contributed to the world we inhabit now, but that world is not the same as it was in 2001.

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Many have described the crisis prompted by the MV Tampa as one of the most dramatic events in Australia’s history. Like many dramatic events it seemed to come out of nowhere. In one sense this is true. The Palapa – a dilapidated Indonesian fishing boat packed with 438 mainly Hazara refugees – was rescued by a Norwegian freighter on open waters, but anxiety about boat arrivals had been building for years. Immigration detention centres across Australia, from Port Hedland to Villawood, were full. Unauthorised boat arrivals which had human cargo incorrectly but commonly described as “illegals” made for a charged political issue.

26 August 2001 was a turning point. The MV Tampa rescued asylum seekers north of Christmas Island, an operation Captain Arne Rinnen saw as a standard international rescue at sea. He never imagined that the Australian government would not allow the asylum seekers on board to disembark at Christmas Island. The high-stakes action unfolded quickly. The SAS boarded the ship when it entered Australian waters.

The same day, the government presented its border protection legislation to parliament. Meanwhile, there was a frantic rush to establish a detention centre on Nauru, money no object.

The public seemed to love this “decisive action”, as the prime minister John Howard called it.

As talkback radio made clear, Howard’s statement that “we are not a soft touch” not only resonated, it united voters behind him in their antipathy towards asylum seekers. Howard had dismissed the United Nations’ criticism of Australia’s mandatory detention policy for years. Voters who weeks before may have been inclined to give their vote to Labor’s Kim Beazley, would not be swayed by international law or human rights advocates either.

Journalists were kept busy covering challenges to the Tampa legislation and the internal agonies of Labor. But it was difficult, deliberately so, for them to report in detail on the new border security regime.

Media relations were funnelled through defence minister Peter Reith’s office. It controlled the story, ensuring that the refugees on board and later housed on remote islands remained faceless and nameless.

Focus shifted to New York and Washington after the September 11 attacks. In one crucial respect, however, the Tampa crisis and the terror attacks were conflated. A narrative took hold that asylum seekers might be terrorists too, seeking to blow up buildings and attack our way of life. We were at war; John Howard’s press conference announcing the November election happened to be held on the same day the United States started bombing the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Years later in 2019, refugees continue to be demonised. There are far more displaced people than there were in 2001. Manus Island and Nauru are still in operation.

But there is growing disquiet about the policy of indefinite detention, whichpolling reflects. Unlike 2001, we now know the names of some detainees and hear them in their own words through social media.

Celebrating Behrouz Boochani receiving a major Australian literary prize or Abdul Aziz Muhamat winning a major human rights award is tinged with shame about their circumstances on the Manus Island prison, as they call it.

We know the names of the men who have died too, including Omid Masoumali. Craig Foster wrote in a letter to Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten that raising international support to free Hakeem al-Araibi – something most Australians supported – from jail in Bangkok was difficult because of Australia’s own detention of refugees.

Challenges to journalism have been relentless since 2001, and visas to Manus and Nauru nearly impossible to obtain. The Paladin affair makes clear how little transparency there is.

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Howard himself has always argued that his government was making a comeback in the polls before Tampa. What is true is that his government was united, unlike Morrison’s government. It wasn’t besieged by a new scandal every other day in the league of Paladin, Helloworld or the Australian Workers’ Union raids inquiry. There were memorable byelections in Ryan and Aston earlier in 2001, but senior members of Howard’s government weren’t resigning in the last days of the parliament, as Julie Bishop and Christopher Pyne have done in the past fortnight.

Crucially, the source of voters’ deepest fears has shifted.

The existential – and actual – threat in 2001 was terrorism. We argued about the Kyoto protocol then, but now climate change is what panics us. Now it is harder to merge the issues of national security with asylum seekers, which may be why the home affairs minister Peter Dutton appears to channel Donald Trump at his most base when he suggests some offshore detainees may be rapists and paedophiles.

The inadequacy of the government’s response to the new climate reality is stark. When Australians come to vote in May, memories of the hottest days on record, floods, fire, drought and massive fish kills will hold more sway than Dutton’s accusations about asylum seekers.