Yesterday, words. Today, illustrations. As John Howard set about selling his Education Tax Rebate, the connection between one day and the next could not have been any clearer.

We were in the Queensland electorate of Dickson, where Grandpa John descended on Our Lady of the Way Primary School in Petrie to kiss babies, marvel at the foliage, and shake the hands of the kind of parents who are likely to benefit from yesterday's announcement.

A co-educational Catholic primary school, Our Lady of the Way is precisely the kind of school the Coalition's education rebate has been designed to benefit. To the extent that the rebate covers school fees and will be available to all parents regardless of income, the rebate is, among other things, an implicit attempt to encourage enrolment in private schools.

Today, then, was a none-too-subtle attempt to win the hearts and minds of private school parents everywhere. Not to mention Catholics. Every time a politician mentions Jesus, a dog perks up its ears.

The event started with the usual theatre and ended with our first doorstop in three days. In between, there were scones, Kelly Clarkson, and a mildly ludicrous number of infants.

Grandpa John had arrived just in time for a whole-school assembly, where he was given a rousing welcome by the seemingly star-struck school captains.

He was treated (some of us would have said subjected) to the musical talents of the school choir, which gave an earnest rendition of Kelly Clarkson's 'Breakaway'. Their shrill little voices tripped over the verses before going for broke when they hit the better-known chorus. It was all very adorable in a mildly-embarrassing-to-be-there kind of way.

The Prime Minister gave a throwaway speech on the value of a Catholic education and the importance of listening to your parents and teachers. Ironically, the message was lost on everyone because no one was really listening. They were too busy watching the media.

The photographers were all over the scene like a rash, sitting on the stage, lying in the aisles, and running around to the other side of the building and leaning in through open windows. This was truly an assembly like no other.

A few of the older children waved excitedly at one of the television cameras while its operator was trying to get vision of the audience. If looks could kill, there would have been murders. The operator removed his eye from the eyepiece and angrily mouthed a single word: "Don't!" Scared, they sat back down and didn't.

The assembly ended and it was announced that there would now be a full-school photo with the Prime Minister in the schoolyard. While the children milled around outside, organising themselves into some kind of formation, Grandpa John and some local mothers retired to an adjacent room to discuss tax rebates and eat pumpkin scones. The photographers snapped away at their heels. The camera operators rolled miles of tape. The print and wire journalists followed along dutifully, waiting to be rewarded for their patience with a doorstop.

We all hungrily eyed off the scones and waited for a spare moment to steal them. And then outside for the photo and a hands-on lesson in image-making.

The conceit was simple. The image would consist of a densely packed configuration of bodies in which John, Janette (an ever-present, slightly vacuous figure, like a cross between Hyacinth Bucket and a reanimated, glassy-eyed corpse) and Member for Dickson Peter Dutton would be the central point, the eye of the tornado, around which the mass of bodies would pivot. With the kids cheering, the image would a triumphant celebration of Howard and his education policy. Four hundred well-groomed private school students cheering for the right to a rebate on their fees. Hoorah!

The photographers stood at the front of the crowd, instructing everyone to cheer on cue. They looked a little like portrait photographers trying to get babies to sit still, only they were trying to get the opposite.

While the press photographers are only ever trying to create an interesting image for tomorrow's front page, it seems to me that they are simultaneously complicit in the creation of what is, for all intents and purposes, political propaganda. There is nothing in any way real about the photographic event they are willing into existence. A press secretary suggested it to them and they decided to run with it. The resultant image will be loaded with meaning that the situation in which it was created, which was ultimately far more cynical, did not have.

On the other hand, the photographers can also create controversy where no controversy exists. I have taken countless photographs this week that could be construed in a way not particularly beneficial to the Prime Minister. There's one in which he looks like he's fighting with a constituent, when in actual fact he was expressing (probably faux) surprise as something they'd said. I haven't, and wouldn't, publish these photos because they do not represent the truth of the moment in which they were taken.

And it occurs to me that, for any number of these photographers, the ethics of photojournalism hardly ever come into play. There is little consideration of the function of an image or how it may be co-opted and used, and to what end. I can't imagine any of the photographers on the campaign trail saying: "No, I won't take that."

But then, out here on the hustings, to refuse to take part in the image-making (or, worse, mythmaking) process is to not take any pictures at all. With every event so meticulously stage-managed, there are save few opportunities to make images that aren't necessarily on-message.

For this reason, it was hardly surprising when we retired to the front of the school and there was a lectern set up for a doorstop in front of a fig tree.

Howard's visit to the school began with one of the more irrelevant lines of the campaign. "That's a lovely tree," he said as he stepped out of his car towards three clearly handpicked, because cherubic, children.

The good men and women of the media were momentarily thrown. The fig tree in question was indeed lovely, but what of the children, John, the children? Still, he looked at the tree for moment, admiring its age and strength and dignity, engaging with it on its own terms, in its own time.

That tree, in a sense, was a metaphor for John Howard. And he wanted to be seen with it. Click.

ElectionTracker, 13 November 2007