How long now until a demonstration "women and children" people smuggling voyage?

- commentary by Tony Kevin, 14 May 2004

I want to get this commentary out first, in case it happens – maybe even this weekend ?

Now that both John Howard and Amanda Vanstone in responding to this week’s release of the HREOC report have pointedly warned that children cannot be let out of immigration detention because to do so would send a signal to "the people smugglers" to send down more women and children to Australia, how long might it be before the AFP/DIMIA People Smuggling Strike Team, or other more covert Australian agencies in the business of people-smuggling disruption , set up a demonstration "people-smuggling" voyage with women and children on board, to remind us all of these alleged risks ?

There have already been three questionable voyages of suspected illegal entry vessels (SIEVs) carrying alleged illegal immigrants in 2003-2004 (Amanda Vanstone became Minister for Immigration in October 2003).

I have been asking serious public questions about the peculiar circumstances of these three voyages – the Vietnamese boat "Hao Kiet" that turned up on 2 July 2003 off Port Hedland , WA, with 53 Vietnamese on board; the Indonesian boat "Minasa Bone" that turned up at Melville Island on 4 November 2003 carrying 14 male Kurds; and the unnamed boat that dropped off 15 Indonesian workers at Ashmore Reef in early March 2004 and then disappeared.

Questions like:

• Why do all three boats reach land destinations (two on or near mainland Australia) apparently undetected, and certainly not intercepted, by Australian authorities ?
• Why did the latest boat in March 2004 (to Ashmore Reef) even return to Indonesia undetected ?
• Where were Australia’s border protection surveillance and interception systems ? Where was Coastwatch ? Where was JORN radar, now reportedly fully operational? Were they all asleep at the wheel ? I don’t think so.
• How and why did Australia’s border security systems deteriorate from a 92% detection rate in 2001 (12 out of 13 SIEVs were detected – only SIEV X was missed) to an apparent zero detection rate in 2003-4 (none detected out of these three known boats)? No SIEV boats have been reported as intercepted and returned to Indonesia since December 2001.
• Is it government policy now to let SIEVs through and pick them up on arrival in Australian territorial waters ? Were these three boats, even assuming one or more of them were spontaneous commercial ventures, deliberately allowed to go through to Australian territory in order to send a domestic political message that border protection is still a security threat?

• In the "Minasa Bone" case, why did this well-equipped modern boat with navigational aids land at Melville Island (a remote and conveniently excisable offshore island – it was excised the evening of the day the boat arrived), when it could just as easily have sailed directly into Darwin ? The passengers wanted to claim asylum, not to hide - so why did the crew take them to Melville, not Darwin?
• And why did "Minasa Bone" and its crew disappear as soon as Navy towed the boat back to Indonesia? Why weren’t the crew arrested as people smugglers?
• Why, when such awkward questions started to be asked, was a Turkish kebab shop owner in Sydney called Ali Cetin suddenly produced in a diversionary series of media exposes as the alleged voyage organiser, despite his pleas of innocence? Why has he not been charged since, despite a series of allegedly incriminating media stories about him ?

• Why did the third boat ( March 2004) disappear so completely, and with absolutely no evidence as to who organised it ? (a boat coming to Ashmore Reef from AFP former informant Kevin Enniss’s old area of operations, the Timor/Lombok area).
• Why does the first boat in eight years to carry Indonesians seeking illegal entry to Australia suddenly appear now in March 2004 – an election year in Australia?

Anyone who saw David Marr’s ABC Mediawatch last Monday will have marvelled at the amazing lengths the Australian authorities went to, in order to prevent any media access to the people on any of these three boats. They seemed to have something to hide.

Of course, if one was cooking three phoney people smuggling voyages for domestic political purposes, the last thing one would want is inquisitive reporters snooping around asking the passengers and crew awkward questions like where and how they were recruited and by whom.

Armed with this sort of analysis, the perplexing mysteries of media blackout queried by David Marr in Monday’s Mediawatch fall into logical place.

So how long till the next "people smuggling" voyage? Surely there will be at least one more before the election. How many women and children will be on board ? But will they be allowed to live this time ?

Tony Kevin, Canberra, 14 May 2004