Deservedly, "Dark Victory" has sold like hot cakes and is about to go into a second updated edition in 2004.

It is featured on the Recommended Reading of 2003 lists by many reviewers ( eg it gets four independent recommendations in the latest, December 2003 issue of the Australian Book Review). It is having a major impact on how Australians are realising and responding to the gross deceit and cruelty of things that John Howard’s government did to asylum-seekers in order to ensure its re-election in November 2001. I am sure that the book will help unseat the Howard government next time around. Howard will not be able to pull off the same kind of tricks as Tampa or children overboard again.

So was it churlish and ungrateful of me to take issue with the book’s prematurely exonerating conclusion on SIEV X :

"Australia did not kill those who drowned on SIEV X, but their deaths can't be left out of the reckoning entirely." ?

I don’t think so, but judge for yourself. I stand by my view that "DV" should have given more recognition and support to the questions raised in the Senate motions on SIEV X in December 2002. What has happened since then – the release of the Jakarta Embassy cable in February 2003, the AFP’s manifest trickery and hypocrisy over the legal pursuit of Abu Quassey and Khaled Daoed, the two more Senate motions on SIEV X in October 2003 – I think gives further weight to my criticism of premature exoneration.

I hope that the second edition of "DV" will be bolder on SIEV X.

But of course it is really up to me. As David Marr has properly said to me: "Tony, hurry up and publish your own book ! ". He is right. And when all is said and done, "DV" has humanised and broadened the terms of the public debate on border protection. We should all be grateful for this.

TK 8 .12.03