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According to his Anglican Church website biography,
Dr Tom Frame was appointed Anglican Bishop to the Australian
Defence Force in June 2001. For two years before that, he was
Rector of the Anglican diocese of Bungendore, near Canberra.
He took holy orders in 1993. He retired from the Royal Australian
Navy at Lieutenant rank in 1992 after a thirteen-year naval
career, much of which involved tertiary studies. He worked in
military museums and convened the first Australian Naval History
Seminar in 1991. He completed a PhD in naval history in 1991.
Frame is a prolific and popular author of over
twelve books, mostly in the field of naval and Anglican church
history. Perhaps his best-known book is Where Fate Calls:
The HMAS Voyager Tragedy (1991), which he describes as the
definitive study of the collision of HMAS Voyager with
HMAS Melbourne in 1964, with eighty two lives lost. A
recent ABC television documentary Unfit to Command (David
Salter, 2003), came to quite different conclusions about why
Voyager collided with Melbourne.
As a consecrated bishop, a former naval officer,
and a military historian, Frame's career path sits somewhat
uneasily between God and Caesar. It is clear from his biodata
that the Australian Government, the Navy and the Anglican Church
have all been generous to Frame’s career — he is a diligent
worker and loyal to his colleagues. The topic of his Master
of Theology thesis in 1992 was The Delphic Sword: Reconciling
Christianity and Military Service in Australia. He returned
to that topic more recently, writing two successive articles
concerning the morality of the coalition invasion of Iraq, whose
titles speak for themselves:
A US-led war in Iraq would be just - but
I pray it will not eventuate - 12/2/2003
Forgive me, I was wrong about the justification
for invading Iraq - 25/6/2004
(Both essays are accessible on http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/author.asp?id=677
)
In the second article, Frame concedes that
Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction, did not pose
a threat to either its nearer neighbours or the United States
and its allies, and did not host or give material support to
al-Qa'ida or other terrorist groups. He concludes that the invasion
of Iraq was not a just war, but 'just another war', and he asks
God's forgiveness for his complicity in creating a world in
which this sort of action was ever considered by anyone to be
necessary: he does not however ask for the forgiveness of the
families of the estimated 100 000 Iraqis killed in and since
the invasion. Still, he maintains that the Australian Government
and ADF definitely believed at the time of the invasion that
Iraq possessed WMD and would employ them in support of its national
interests. So his retraction of the justice of this war is less
than it might seem at first glance.
Frame has a forthcoming book, War &
Christian Ethics (Cambridge University Press). It is clear
from what I have seen of his writings and speeches that he trusts
in the moral integrity and regularity of conduct of Australian
governments, and is committed to upholding the honour and public
reputation of the ADF including the Navy.
It is therefore understandable that Frame would
have found my recent book, A Certain Maritime Incident –
the Sinking of SIEV X (Scribe Books, Melbourne, August 2004),
deeply unsettling. His views on the book were set out in a review
published recently in the Spring 2004 issue of Defender
- journal of the Australian Defence Association, and in the
September-November 2004 issue of Public Administration Today,
journal of the Canberra Branch of the Australian Institute of
Public Administration. Between them, these two journals, though
not large in circulation, would reach an influential senior
military and public service readership.
Frame rejects my book on both professional
and ethical grounds. The right of fearless enquiry based on
public evidence into any kind of questionable government conduct
is effectively challenged by this kind of critique.
On 19 October 2001, in waters where Australian
Government border protection authorities at the time had a duty
of care to try to protect life, 353 people drowned when an overloaded
and unseaworthy asylum-seeker vessel that was trying to reach
Australia’s Christmas Island lost engine power and foundered.
All of Australia’s naval and air surveillance and interception
assets patrolling the area did not detect or go to the aid of
this unnamed stricken vessel, which I later named 'SIEV X' —
'suspected illegal entry vessel, unknown'.
Frame is suspicious of the evidence and analysis
set out in my book. He believes that in this case, we might
be confronted with the unknown and burdened with the unknowable.
He suggests I should not have excluded more benign and less
controversial explanations of what occurred.
He berates me for, as he claims, questioning the integrity of
individuals in government and the Australian Defence Force:
'I do not believe it is proper to speculate when such speculation
affects an individual's professional reputation or their good
standing in the community.' He suggests, as someone personally
acquainted with five Navy admirals whose evidence before the
Senate enquiry into the sinking of SIEV X is analysed in my
book (Admirals Shackleton, Ritchie, Smith, Gates and Bonser),
that 'they have every right to feel aggrieved at the manner
in which Kevin has constantly impugned their character and questioned
their integrity.'
He thereby opens up a possibility of his review
being cited in support of defamation suits against me, a possibility
already urged by one indignant correspondent to Defender
in the issue after Frame's review appeared.
Frame's key judgement is that my book has not
provided sufficient documentary or circumstantial evidence to
prove its case, nor has it shown why this incident is primarily
a matter for the Australian government to investigate without
the full and willing co-operation of the Indonesian authorities.
He says there are always valid and reasonable grounds for Australian
governments to decide not to deal with some matters in open
forums: 'The withholding of some information is vital to the
maintenance of good government and public administration, especially
in relation to combating criminal activity and conducting international
diplomacy.' Frame says that while such reticence could be interpreted
as prima facie evidence of a cover-up, he does not believe that
I have shown that SIEV X is 'anything other than the routine
exercise of a government's discretion to withhold information
about current and continuing operations and activities. This
does not amount to a conspiracy to cover up wrongdoing.'
Frame's language thus hints that, if there
were any improper aspect to these 353 deaths, it is more likely
attributable to Indonesian authorities; but that Australian
authorities cannot responsibly investigate this question further
without jeopardising their obligations to combat crime and conduct
diplomacy.
Frame reaches such exonerating conclusions
by ignoring most of the content and argument of my book: the
crucial Australian cable traffic and intelligence reports at
the time of SIEV X that were concealed from the Senate enquiry
and only released later; and the multiple evasions and omissions
in sworn official evidence (civilian, police and military) given
to Senators.
He ignores the Australian Federal Police's
people smuggling disruption program, whose covert dealings with
people smugglers and Indonesian police disruption teams in Indonesia
are at the heart of my book. He makes no mention of the botched
pursuit by the AFP of the Egyptian people smuggler who organised
the SIEV X voyage, Abu Quassey.
He ignores five passed Senate motions in 2002-04,
calling for a full-powers independent judicial inquiry into
the disruption program and the sinking of SIEV X. The Australian
Government has similarly ignored these motions.
Frame dismisses the rich tapestry of survivor
accounts as 'mere journalism', whose credibility for him is
put in question by presumed language and translation difficulties.
He disparages (on specious grounds) the Jakarta Harbormaster's
official report of the rescue coordinates where fishing boats
picked up forty five survivors. He ignores corroborating Australian
official evidence, confirming that the boat sank in the Australian
border protection zone of operations.
Without any offered reasons, he condemns (in
his Defender review text) Marg Hutton’s scholarly website www.sievx.com
, the indispensable archival resource for serious students of
the SIEV X history, as 'notorious' and 'polemical'.
Frame's review is politically significant because
his judgements as Anglican Bishop to the Defence Force must
carry credibility and authority.
This review could have the result of intimidating
further scholarship about questionable government conduct: sending
message to senior people in and around government not to engage
with this book, and giving an implicit warning to me to abandon
this cause unless I want to risk defamation suits.
Such warnings in the present strained political
and administrative climate in Australia are not as laughable
as they would be in a well-functioning democracy. It has been
remarkable, and frightening, to see over the past three years
how few people in Australian public life have dared to breach
the SIEV X taboo. The number of brave people - headed by the
admirable Senator John Faulkner - who asked legitimate public
questions about SIEV X and the disruption program history is
worryingly small. Even after my book, an unspoken 'Do Not Touch'
warning rope still hangs around SIEV X.
Fortunately, New Matilda is not subject
to such self-censorship. My book asks proper questions about
a serious case where Australian government accountability seems
to have gone off the rails. It is not, in intent or outcome,
about defaming any individuals. But in order to tell the history
accurately, it had to cite and comment on individual officials'
Senate testimonies. Such public questions need to be admissible
in any democracy based on the rule of law, not declared Off
Limits. After all, 353 people died here in suspicious circumstances.
It matters to find out how and why they died.
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