Left to drown? The case of boat X

By GREG ANSLEY

Late last year, with an election just weeks away and an apparently unending armada of refugee boats sailing from Indonesia, did Australian officials condemn 353 people to death?

The implication, raised with evidence that the Navy knew a dangerously overloaded, decrepit boat was heading to almost certain doom but did nothing to prevent the subsequent tragedy, has intensified Australia's agony over the interception and detention of illegal asylum seekers.

While it seems inconceivable that naval officers on land would order one of their ships to stand by while people drowned - or that a captain and crew at sea would obey and remain silent - the suggestion made by a former diplomat has gained surface credibility through official minutes and the evidence of one of the Navy's most senior officers.

The Navy contends that while it knew in advance that the boat was heading into likely danger, its available aircraft and ships were occupied intercepting other boats elsewhere, and there was nothing it could have done.

But that explanation contradicted earlier evidence and added to a disturbing tale of deception and manipulation emerging from a twice-extended Senate inquiry into the quaintly named "certain maritime incident" that last October fuelled Prime Minister John Howard's refugee and terrorist-supercharged run for a third term in power.

This saga has overlapped domestic and international outrage at Australia's policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers for months on end in remote Outback camps, sparking riots, self-mutilation, hunger strikes and mass breakouts from a system condemned by, among others, the United Nations.

But at home, the growing clamour from a broad coalition of academics, churches, health and welfare groups, human rights activists, refugee and ethnic groups, students and minor political parties has failed to dent an electorally popular policy supported by both Howard's Coalition and the Labor Opposition.

Howard has also brushed off foreign criticism, which began mounting in earnest with the Tampa crisis off Christmas Island and has continued throughout the naval blockade of Australia's western territorial waters, the "Pacific solution" of farming out detainees to Nauru, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand, and the more recent excising of hundreds of islands from the mainland as far as asylum seekers are concerned, denying them protection under international law even if they manage to make a landfall on Australian territory.

New Zealand is unlikely to face a similar problem, but the Government is taking no chances. The presumed loss of 42 asylum seekers on a dilapidated boat rumoured to have been heading for this country coincided with tough new laws last week against illegal asylum seekers and people smugglers.

In Canberra, Australia's agony is being played out in the closing stages of a Senate inquiry into dramas, disasters and despair in the Indian Ocean, launched after it became apparent that the Government had lied about and manipulated the refugee armada to create a potent weapon in its bid to retain power in last November's election.

The committee conducting the inquiry was to have reported last month, but gained one extension to June 26 and will this week seek Senate approval for further time, even with only one final public hearing scheduled.

"The nature of this beast seems to be to grow legs," said committee secretary Brenton Holmes.

The latest revelations over the Navy's knowledge of the sinking of the so-called SIEV (suspected illegal entry vessel) are only one of a crop of issues still outstanding.

These include the Government's refusal to allow six officials to give evidence - including the Admiral heading a Defence task force on the issue and advisers to Howard and the former and present Defence Ministers, Peter Reith and Senator Robert Hill.

This raises an entirely new constitutional wrangle over the relevant powers of the Executive and the Parliament. The Senate has legal advice that its power to force witnesses to appear includes Government officials and, by convention, excludes only MPs from the House of Representatives.

The Senate can impose fines and even jail sentences, but to act in this case would run counter to its own 1994 view that it would be unfair to prosecute public servants who failed to obey subpoenas on the orders of their political masters.

Because this was a political problem, it would be resolved politically, not administratively, legally or any other way, said one source.

Even without these witnesses, however, the inquiry has blackened Government credibility.

In October, as the election barrages opened, Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock thrust asylum-seekers to the forefront of Government strategy by claiming that desperate parents on a boat intercepted by the Navy had flung their children into the Indian Ocean.

The incident, later apparently backed by photographs given to the media, shocked Australians.

More shocking were the revelations that nothing of the kind had happened, and that the Government had lied to boost the popularity of its tough stand on asylum seekers and strengthen its credentials as the protector of Australian security and values at a time of deep concern, heightened by the September 11 terror attacks.

The later, full release of Navy videotapes confirmed the allegations: the Senate inquiry that began in February has clearly revealed the extent of the fabrication.

The truth of the "children overboard" interception was revealed in detail to the Senate inquiry by Commander Norman Banks, of the guided missile frigate HMAS Adelaide, which intercepted the boat near Christmas Island on October 7.

Before it reached Australian waters, Banks sent an inflatable boat across to the Indonesian vessel, spoke to the people on board, checked the seaworthiness of the boat, and shadowed it through the dark.

At 1.30am, the boat was ordered to heave to in English, Balinese and Arabic, warning shots were fired, and sailors finally boarded it. One person jumped overboard and was pulled back on board, and the boat headed back out of Australian waters.

After dawn, 14 adults jumped or were thrown into the sea and one child was held overboard - but not dropped.

The boat was eventually taken under tow until, about 24 hours later, it began sinking and its 223 passengers were taken on board the Adelaide.

Banks told the committee he had not mentioned the single incident of the child held overboard when he spoke to northern commander Brigadier Michael Silverstone.



Even when Howard was told by Reith two days before the election that the photographs purporting to prove children were hurled into shark-infested waters were dubious, the doubts were kept secret.

The Senate has uncovered much more: Howard's advisers gave him an intelligence report they knew to be flawed; defence public affairs officers were told to doctor the details of official photographs; Reith's office was told by a senior military officer three days after the alleged incident that it had never happened; and Reith himself had been told before the election in an official cable that no children had been thrown overboard and that pictures supposedly proving this in fact showed their rescue from a sinking vessel.

Reith later admitted this, but said he had failed to tell Howard. Similarly, outgoing Chief of Defence Force Admiral Chris Barrie was forced into a humiliating reversal of his earlier support of the Government claims.

The defence bureaucracy has been burned by a witchhunt, ministerial advisers were first accused, then cleared, of interfering with a witness, and a political earthquake has reshaped the highest levels of the Defence Force.

But while Australia has long accepted the Government's lies and had been exhibiting the classic symptoms of children overboard fatigue, the latest allegations of deliberately allowing asylum seekers to drown have dramatically refocused interest in the inquiry.

The claims were first made by a former diplomat, Tony Kevin, who last month suggested that the Government might have allowed the boat now known as SIEV-X to sink, with the loss of 353 lives, as a warning to others planning to cross illegally from Indonesia.

The Navy initially said it had no knowledge of the boat until October 22, days after it sank.

But Defence Maritime Commander Geoffrey Smith later told the inquiry that five separate intelligence reports long before that date had detailed the boat's impending departure from Indonesia, its actual departure, and the fact it was small and overcrowded.

Smith clarified his evidence after the Coastwatch director-general, Rear Admiral Mark Bonser, advised him his earlier statement would conflict with evidence about to be given by Coastwatch. Official minutes have since confirmed the Navy's prior knowledge. Smith said Air Force patrol aircraft were busy at the time hunting for three other boats.

Bonser said Coastwatch had not searched for the boat because Defence was responsible for the area - but also that whatever action had been taken, he could see no way Australia could have prevented the sinking.

Feature: Immigration