Remarks by Henry Rosenbloom, Publisher at Scribe Books, and by Julian Burnside, QC, at the book launch of A Certain Maritime Incident – the sinking of SIEV X, at Readings Bookshop, Carlton, Melbourne, on 2 August 2004:

Note: This is an extract of Julian Burnside’s final remarks only. A full transcription of his full text, which discussed the SIEV X history in the broader context of Operation Relex and the 2001 Australian election campaign, will go up on this website later:

Henry Rosenbloom:

"I don’t want to say too many words. I always think a book should speak for itself. And tonight, we have got the benefit of hearing from Julian Burnside whom I am sure would be very well known to most of you, and from the author Tony Kevin. But I do want to say briefly that we specialise in publishing what we call serious non-fiction, and we have published a lot of important books over the years, we’ve been in business for over 25 years. I think this book is one of the most important we have ever published, and it may even be the most important.

Tony was interviewed by Jon Faine of the ABC this morning, and when he was concluding the interview, Jon himself said to Tony: "If you are right, Australia has blood on its hands; and if you are wrong, then you owe an apology to a lot of people in the current government". That is about as good a summary as you could get, without going into details.

Tony is accused by some people of two contradictory failings. One is that he is obsessive, and that he won’t let go of an important story. And the other is that he has got nothing new to say.

You’ll find when you read this book that it is a most extraordinary forensic analysis of a case that smells to high heaven – I won’t put it any stronger than that. It is a persuasive, explosive, compelling analysis. It is the result of years of investigation, and behind it are 30 years of training that Tony Kevin has had in the Australian diplomatic service. His understanding for the nuance and the significance of everything that has happened in this case is unparalleled.

And in a sense with this book, Tony Kevin has become Australia’s Emile Zola. This is his "J’accuse" for those who understand and remember the significance. I don’t want to say any more about the book. I think this book will reverberate for a long time, and it deserves to. To launch the book, here is Julian Burnside QC".

Julian Burnside:.

" … Tony Kevin, I think, was a force that the government could not have guessed at or reckoned with. His persistence in pursuing this story, which would otherwise have sunk without trace, has been astonishing. It has come at a very great cost to him personally, financially, and in terms of the attacks on his reputation which inevitably followed, of someone who is uncomfortably pursuing the truth. The fact that Tony has stuck at it over these last several years, I think is a great credit to him. Because it would have been very easy at many points simply to turn aside and give it up. Because even in the Senate enquiry into the children overboard affair, which was widened at Tony’s suggestion, to encompass the SIEV X tragedy - even the Senate enquiry tended to be dismissive of his allegations.

Although as Henry has pointed out, the evidence that Tony has put together makes a compelling case for the greater probability being that the government was complicit in the deaths of the people on the SIEV X, very likely knew about the overcrowding on the boat, very likely knew that it had embarked, very likely knew that it was in the surveillance zone, and very likely turned a blind eye. Because they understood only too well what a message it would send to people smugglers if some asylum-seekers drowned on their way to Australia. No need for corny TV ads with sharks and crocodiles and snakes when you can have a fair-dinkum drowning at sea.

The heady mix of opportunism, dishonesty and populism that worked for the government gradually began to fray at the edges, out of the sustained attack that Tony mounted. Whether we will ever know the truth about the matter remains to be seen. But we do know this – that the government has been strenuously challenged, by someone whose independence and credibility can hardly be doubted.

The government’s credibility is probably the most important question in the election which we are to have later this year. The honesty of any government is fundamentally important, because democracy cannot survive a dishonest government for very long. And the reason for that is obvious. Democracy works on the idea that the elected government is in truth the representative of the people. And if they deceive the people about what they are doing or why, then they cease to represent the people who elected them to power.

Tony at one point in his book produces a quotation which I had not come across before, but which I think captures this perfectly: "Milan Kundera said that the struggle of the people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting". And this book will ensure that memory survives forgetting, for as long as people can read and for as long as people in Australia care about the honesty of their own government. I am privileged to have been asked to launch it, and I congratulate Tony for writing it."