Horus – I know you are uninterested in facts or truth, so I’ll just add a few more pieces of evidence to further demonstrate the extent of your wilful dishonesty. There is no point in engaging with you further.

“This issue is too important to be masked by traditional lib/lab/class rivalries”

And that would be why you’ve been soooo dispassionate, unbiased and accurate in your comments?!

“If (short-term) -cheapness- was the determiner . Then why not also extend it to drug enforcement;
no border checks, no prosecutions – big savings in money and personnel!”

Um… because refugees are not criminals. There were no prosecutions, just imprisonment. You’re the one who complained about me using up taxpayer dollars – I simply pointed out it saved money overall. Refugees are no danger to society. Locking them up simply harms them, cost us money and makes it harder for them to integrate into our society when they are released – at even further cost to us.

“On balance of probabilities the charge is credible -- except technically, according to you, no one can testify they saw A throw B into the sea, though B was found in the sea.

The allegation that children were thrown overboard is false. It is not “technically, according to me” – it is factually according to the most senior officers in Defence. If no can say they saw B thrown into the sea, and B was never seen in the sea, then it is beyond reasonable doubt that it never happened. I appreciate you don’t fall into the categorical of reasonable, but most readers and voters do.

As has repeatedly been said, B (as in children) were found in the sea because their boat sank. They were not in the sea the day before when the Navy first boarded the vessel and the alleged children overboard incident was wrongly said to have occurred. You know this, yet you repeat the falsehood.

In your desperation to smear refugees and advocates of human rights and basic decent, you are in fact calling a range of high ranking defence personnel liars.

A few statements made by Defence officers, on oath:

Admiral Barrie: “I told him (Minister Reith) that I had been advised that the photographs he had put out did not describe the events as he portrayed on the 7.30 Report."

Brigadier Silverstone, regarding a discussion with Minister Reith:
"I used words to the effect of ‘Well, Minister, the video does not show things clearly and does not show children overboard. We also have concerns that no children were thrown in the water at all and we have made an investigation of that’. …. He then said, ‘Well, we had better not see the video then,’ and left my office."

Air Marshal Houston – then acting and now current Chief of Defence – provided the following advice to the Minister:
“fundamentally there was nothing to suggest that women and children had been thrown into the water.”

Air Marshal Houston stated that: “If a child had been in the water, it would have been reported in the text of the message”. He said he based that assessment, not only on his many years’ experience of military messaging in joint operations, but also on the fact that although the signal made a number of specific references to children on board SIEV 4, there were no references to children overboard.

Photographs released to the media on 10 October as evidence of children thrown overboard on 7 October were actually pictures taken the following day, 8 October, while SIEV 4 was sinking.

Personally, I have enormous admiration for the Navy personnel who had to do a very difficult and distasteful job & performed amazingly to rescue every person from the sinking boat who ended up in the water, including many children. They deserved commendation, not to be used as cheap political pawns by a government who knew well in advance of the election that they had misled the Australian people in a desperate effort to smear refugees. Though not as desparate as Horus & co, going through their Groundhog Day time after time still kidding themselves that no one has found out the truth.

Andrew

No I don't think you should write stuff that is false but you should not assume your truth is the only truth and anyone who cannot agree with you is wrong and deserving of a lacvk of respect.
Yopu should also stop the misquoting and strawman arguments for a moment.
And please stop trying to put labels on me and address my questions and concerns.

Point to where you have detailled your preferences of effective action to protect our borders from overwhelming asylum seekers. Measures that will work.

Detail your preference for the actual numbers of humanitarian refugees and the mix of our annual immigration intake and at what point you'd implement severe restrictions to stop those over and above your number of preference.

Tell me how you will make Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand sign up to any uniform International Treaty on the treatment refugees.
Tell me how you will force them to allow unfettered access by the UN to assess refugees.
I'm astonished you think lecturing, with a holier than thou attitude, the Thais, Malaysian, Singaporeans and Indonesians will achieve anything. They'll simply say Australia is handing the problem ok and doesn't seem to need their assistance.

And what about India? You've skipped them or do you think their attitude ok?

You are right though I have no faith in the Rudd Government to improve the treatment of Asylum seekers anywhere ... especially since they cannot protect our borders. Have delivered asylum seekers into the hands of the Indonesians. Who now it seems are accepting our money for taking asylum seekers who were rescued at sea and refusing to take their international responsibilities for those people seriously. It is astonishing the Rudd Government was unaware the Indonesian President had no authority to direct the regional Indonesian Governors to do anything.
After this disgraceful episode Rudd would have little respect throughout Asia.

I have great faith in Australians to force our governmenmts to do the bidding of the majority of us. Seen todays polls? Watch Rudd react. I'd love to hear his 'focus group' this morning.

Andrew Bartlett, I have had enough of this nonsense. I began by calling you a flawed man and have accused you of playing with words. I have put up scenarios and asked you to find fault with my argument and you continue to lie, pretend to misunderstand and continually play with words and take quotes out of context. You are no better than Sens. Cooke and Falkner, politically motivated nasty men playing politics with the truth.

You say there are no references to children overboard in the signals made by the HMAS Adelaide, yet on the third page of signals (see http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/2002/overboard/cable3.htm) you find several references to RAN sailors preventing the SUNCs from throwing children overboard. Parents threatened to throw their children overboard if they were not taken to Australia. I admit there is no evidence that the children were thrown overboard, but there is plenty of evidence that the SUNCs tried to throw the children overboard and were successfully prevented from doing so by armed guard. Plenty of adults deliberately jumped into the water.

The SUNCs tried to scuttle the SIEV4. They set fire to the engine room, set fire to the decks, wrecked the steering and threw navigational equipment over the side.

Any fair-minded Australian would conclude that they would do anything, even risk the lives of their children to reach our shores illegally.

Any fair-minded Australian would have difficulty in blaming the Qld. Public servants who investigated Cornelia Rau and Vivian Alavarez/Solon and other false names and dates of birth. Both are sad cases and I feel sorry for the women, but you and the ALP turned their plight into a vicious political attack against Sen. Amanda Vanstone, the Federal Minister for Immigration, Multiculturism and Ethnic Affairs.

Geoffrey Kelley

Andrew,

You say:

"I'll say this for you guys, your determination to ignore widely documented fact is very impressive. You're like ghosts of slain warriors on some ancient battle-field, doomed to keep fighting the war you lost long ago. But I'm not really interested in endlessly churning back over facts which have long been established, I'm interested in examining and debating realistic and workable approaches to the issues of today."

Yet all I see in your posts is the rehashing of what happenned years ago.

What are your suggestions for "workable approaches to the issues of today."

CJ Morgan et al are far too interested in accusing people of frog whistling and name calling to bother with actual solutions, so maybe you could have a bash.

geoffreykelley: "you find several references to RAN sailors preventing the SUNCs from throwing children overboard."

Did you link to the correct document? I see no such references. If you did link to the correct document, it would be helpful if you qouted the lines you are referring to.

For what is worth, what I see in the document you did link to is two references of threats to throw children overboard. They were not carried out. No reason was given as to why they were not carried out, and in particular no mention of them being "prevented".

As you say, it looks like the asylum seekers were fairly desperate to get onto the Adelaide, and wanted to force the issue. So they put life jackets on themselves and their kids, disabled their boat and started jumping into the water. It was a pretty good strategy. It didn't put them in any immediate danger, yet forced the crew on the Australian Frigate to act.