Sage “To hold Australia responsible for the seaworthiness of the vast Indonesian fleet of fishing vessels and the sinking of any of that fleet is an exercise in obscurum per obscurius.”

Exactly Sage, wellput.

DNB “other refugee groups were desperate cases that demanded an immediate humane intervention.”
The world is full of “desperate cases”, some in Australia and others overseas.

That is fact. Another fact, the primary responsibility of the Australian government is to represent the Australian population who elected them to office. Government should not be sidetracked or blackmailed by those who subvert the processes of legal migration because of claims and perceptions of their “desperation”.

David_BOAZ “No Tony, sorry, it does not matter squat now.”

It did not matter squat when it happened, except to those who, through their own selfish attempts to queue-jump, drowned.

Out trot Sage and co with the same spurious arguments who fail after five years to understand the basic facts of this tragedy and seem to have so little respect for human life they simply shrug so let's look at who these people were and where they came from.

1. 146 were children and 3 babies were born in the sea. This boat was only the second boat with over 400 people on it and only the second boat where the people are known to have been loaded on at gunpoint by Indonesian police with the help of the AFP. Mick Keelty is now pretending to be ever so respectable but at the time he was running phoney "people smuggling" operations.
2. The maps Tony is talking about have whited out a rescue boat that we know very well was rescuing refugees at a particular time of day on 20 October 2001. Who whited out that boat and why? Who sent that boat and why? The records show that 2 hours flying time were lost at the time of the rescue of 44 souls - why, what were the pilots doing?
3. It is legal to come to Australia anyway possible to seek protection and that is still our law. No matter how much you rant about "illegals" and so on it simply is not true and never was.
4. The people on that boat were from Iraq. We were blockading Iraq, stealing $300 million from Iraq and helping to torture and starve the population.
5. Only 7 of the survivors ever made it to Australia but thousands of people all over the world had relatives who drowned but have never been notified of their deaths.
6. The AFP have the list of deaths but will not supply them.
7. They were human beings who should have been treated with respect and were not.

I love the christians like DB who dismiss these human lives as if they were nothing.

Keep it up, Marylin, the world needs so many many more like you. This Poster hasn't quite got the guts, though.

Call me crazy but if there is a firm suspicion that this boat sunk because of deliberate sabotage carried out on behalf of our own government and if the passengers then died as a direct consequence of our country turning its back on international rescue obligations, then I for one, would like to be sure about it.

This goes right to the heart of what sort of nation we really are.

No amount of official stonewalling or political obfuscation will change the truth, just delay it from coming out.

To blame the victims and suggest that this is a minor incident that just doesn’t matter anymore, devalues not only the lives of any innocent victims but somehow diminishes us all as a country.

For gods sake, won't someone buy Marilyn a new broom stick.

I tuned in for a fair bit of the Certain Maritime Incident hearings. I actually was hostile to what I thought was Tony Kevin's idea that Australia was somehow involved in the sinking or was deficient in it's duty of care to those on the Siev X.

My position changed as the hearings went on. The main thing that changed it for me was when Nick Keelty gave evidence. He seemed to me to be about as forthcoming as a brick. The 'it's operational' line so can't be discussed kept on being waved. We are expected to take it on trust that our officials and police acted in a above board manner... Surely I'm not the only one here to thinks that this is a open ticket to stray, there must be some openess and accountability.

I think that the Australian public has a right to know what our cops and public servants are doing overseas. I want there to be full disclosure on what the Government's disruption program was in Indonesia in 2001. I hope it will be found to be squeaky clean. But I want to see it done to make sure it is.