Our obsession with Schapelle Corby: poll 

Whichever version or combination you prefer, few among us could honestly say we have not been party to a national fixation with Corby, the now 36-year-old woman who is preparing to walk from jail, on parole in Bali, after almost 10 years behind bars. 

Corby was granted parole last night, along with 1291 prisoners.

Indonesia’s Justice Minister Amir Syamsuddin made the announcement in Jakarta, while Corby awaited the news in Kerobokan.

But, the head of Kerobokan jail said she might have to wait until Monday to taste freedom.

When she is released, Corby will serve her parole in the Kuta home of her sister Mercedes and her husband Wayan Widyartha.

The Corby case has had some real impact in Australia, not least the option for travellers to cling-wrap their luggage before departing international airports. Back in May 2005, when Corby was 27 and most Australians still believed she was innocent, three Indonesian judges did not buy her story: that baggage handlers, probably in Australia, possibly in Bali, must have planted that marijuana in her bag.

Much of the immediate reaction from Australia was outraged, visceral, hostile and driven by an often ugly nationalism. 

Editorials deplored the ‘‘barbaric’’ Indonesian prison system and radio shock jock Malcolm T. Elliott called the judges and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono ‘‘monkeys’’.  

Elliott and broadcaster Alan Jones were appalled that the Corby trial, though run in an Indonesian court, was not conducted in English.

The Indonesian consulate-general in Perth received an anonymous letter containing two bullets, with a message that reportedly said: ‘‘If Schapelle Corby is not released immediately you will all receive one of these bullets through the brain. 

‘‘All Indonesians out now – go home you animals.’’

But what has made Australians invest so much emotion in the daughter, if not of the nation, of a Gold Coast fish and chip shop owner? Why did Corby’s plight ignite so much more sympathy than was expressed for other Australians held captive on foreign soil, such as the so-called Bali Nine heroin mules, or David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib in Guantanamo Bay? 

Is it that Corby, unlike the Bali Nine, has always proclaimed her innocence? 

But then, so have Hicks and Habib. Or could the answer be much more confronting? That Corby is the most photogenic and telegenic of the Australians trapped overseas? 

That, in a line-up, she would win the beauty contest? 

Would she have attracted so much attention if she looked like Renae Lawrence of the Bali Nine?

‘‘That’s a very good question,’’ says Fiona Connolly, editor-in-chief of Woman’s Day. It is one that stops her for a moment.  ‘‘The answer is ... being photogenic certainly didn’t hurt her cause. Those piercing eyes are certainly etched into the memory of many Australians, especially my readers.’’

‘‘An understandable conclusion but not true,’’ says Alexander Downer, who was foreign affairs minister in the Howard government when Corby was arrested at Denpasar Airport in October 2004 and for the two years that followed her trial. He does not want to speculate, either, on the reasons for the national obsession, but he says Corby received the support she warranted. ‘‘Governments can’t be driven by a media campaign.’’

When Fairfax Media called on Wednesday, Mr Downer had not yet heard the breaking news from Indonesia: Mr  Syamsuddin had indicated he was likely to sign Corby’s parole documents by the end of the week. ‘‘Oh,’’ Mr Downer said, ‘‘just in time for her to catch the movie on Channel Nine.’’

In an exquisitely happy coincidence for the Nine Network, it had already scheduled Schapelle, the movie, to screen on Monday night, and has now brought it forward to tomorrow. The film may be interpreted as leaving room for doubt about Corby’s guilt, but it is partly based on Sins of the Father, the book by Fairfax Media journalist Eamonn Duff, who concludes Corby took the rap for her late father Mick’s drug syndicate.

Downer does not offer an opinion on Corby’s guilt or otherwise – ‘‘How would I know?’’ – but recalls: ‘‘There were talkback radio hosts who were swearing black-and-blue she was innocent. Then ...  they changed their minds. I don’t recall there being any particular reason for it, but there was huge sympathy for her to start with, and then almost overnight it evaporated.

‘‘Some media became more forensic and examined the record of the father. And I think the performance of the family – the public went off them after a while. I think perhaps the public saw it as a melodrama. The free Schapelle campaign dried up.’’

It didn’t happen quite overnight, but support for Corby did collapse. By early June in 2005, less than a week after the guilty verdict,  51per cent of Australians believed she was not guilty, a Morgan poll found. By August 2010, a Nielsen poll found only one in 10 respondents believed Corby was innocent, 41per cent said she was guilty and 48per cent did not know. Her fragile mental state at this point was obvious to Fairfax Media correspondent Tom Allard, who she greeted at Kerobokan jail with a manic stare: ‘‘Hey, are you from Krypton?’’

Faith in Corby may have waned, but less so the fascination. The Corby family circus fed the fixation. Schapelle’s half-brother James Kisina, the one who was travelling with her when she was arrested with her boogie board, would be jailed in Queensland in 2006 for his part in a drug-related home invasion. 

Mercedes Corby was forced to fend off drug claims made by a former friend, Jodie Power. While Mercedes admitted smoking some pot as a teenager, she would successfully sue the Seven Network for broadcasting Power’s allegations. Mercedes would also appear as a Ralph magazine cover girl in 2008 and be paid a reported $50,000 for its spread of bikini shots. It was a fraction of the $500,000 that Schapelle could have commanded for a ‘‘bare-all bikini shoot’’, according to The Daily Telegraph. 

Taste has not been a persistent consideration in this saga. Only on Thursday the Corby family denied it had ever retained Kerry Smith-Douglas as a lawyer after she went on Nine’s Today show and, when asked how Schapelle would celebrate her freedom, replied: ‘‘She’ll probably pop a cork of champagne and then roll up a big marijuana joint the size of a cigar and then kick back and enjoy herself.’’  

The ratings for Schapelle tomorrow night will be a measure of the endurance of the national obsession with Corby. If a freed Corby gets to see the film, it will add no cheer to her celebrations in Bali.