Q & A with Tony Kevin: from “Civil Liberty: Journal of the New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties Inc”, pages 16-18, September 2005. With thanks to NSWCCL for this published interview. The NSWCCL website is www.nswccl.org.au

Tony Kevin retired from the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade in 1998, after a thirty-year public service career. He served in the Prime Minister’s Department and was Australia’s ambassador to Poland and Cambodia. He wrote A Certain Maritime Incident, which gives a view on the sinking of the SIEV X that killed 353 asylum seekers on their way to Australia.

Civil Liberty: Why should people who are concerned about civil liberties be concerned about the SIEV X incident?

Tony Kevin: Because we need to be able to trust in the credibility and integrity of government agencies responsible for our security: agencies like the Australian Defence Force, Australian Federal Police, DIMIA, Prime Minister's Department, Foreign Affairs, Attorney-Generals, ASIO, ASIS, Transport, Coastwatch. If these agencies lied and covered up over SIEV X, as they clearly have done, how can we trust them on other matters of concern to us as Australian citizens/residents?

CL: The story of what happened to SIEV X is a lot of more complicated than the basic public perception of a boat of asylum seekers accidentally sinking near Australia. How much of the full story do you think will make its way into the public domain?

TK: Much of the story is already in the public domain, in three readily accessible sources. My book on the sinking of SIEV X is an easily read narrative of the story of the sinking and failed Senate investigation, with full endnotes to facilitate further research. Original source documents are reproduced on my website www.tonykevin.com and on Marg Hutton's independent archival website www.sievx.com .

The problem is not that the information is not available. The problem is that most people would rather not know what it is already possible to know.

CL: Your book raises many questions about the actions of the Australian government in this affair. How well do you feel these questions are answered?

TK: Well answered, in the sense that it is already clear that a major deliberate whole-of-government official cover-up of facts about the sinking of SIEV X, and associated efforts by friends of government to ignore or discredit my work and that of Marg Hutton, has already happened. Not well enough answered, in the sense that we still do not know what were the linkages between the Australian Government's covert people smuggling disruption program in Indonesia in 2000–2001, and the criminals who arranged for the deliberate overloading and sinking of SIEV X apparently as a deterrent. The sworn survivor testimonies, that were used in the recent Brisbane trial to convict Abu Quassey's assistant Khaleed Daoed to 9 years in Australian prison as a people smuggler, further corroborate the survivor evidence assembled in my book, that critics have tried to dismiss as conspiracy theories based on speculations and poor evidence. Sadly, the people smuggling trial could not address my evidence-based questions about the ADF claim to have had no knowledge of the boat entering the ADF Operation Relex surveillance and interception zone and about the AFP-DIMIA people smuggling disruption program, because those matters lay outside the charges. A precious opportunity to get at the truth was wasted.

CL: What sort of responses from people have you received since publishing the book?

TK: Eleven positive reviews and many laudatory book launching speeches and radio interviews—and two lengthy negative reviews that I believe were government-inspired efforts to discredit the book. I responded to negative reviews by Tom Frame and Jennifer Clarke, and invited further public debate.

Those invitations were not taken up. All reviews and responses are accessible on my website. The book won a NSW Premier's Award at the 2005 Sydney Writers Festival and was shortlisted for an Age 2005 Book of the Year Award. It is still in the running for other possible 2005 book awards.

CL: Have you heard what reaction the book received in official circles in Canberra?

TK: John Howard dismissed the book's and my credibility in a planted "Dorothy Dix" question in Parliament in August 2004, a few days after it came out. (see my website). No other government official or politician has referred to the book since. Government strategy is to ignore it and hope people forget about it. Parts of the mainstream media support that strategy. It is very hard now to get SIEV X mentioned anywhere.

CL: Do we have an international obligation to treat asylum seekers humanely?

TK: Yes, of course we do, under many major international treaties to which Australia adheres. See Frank Brennan Tampering with Asylum and Peter Mares Borderline for authoritative analyses of this issue.

CL: Have social attitudes in Australia changed towards boat people in recent years? Why is this so?

TK: Yes, in the sense that the general public has turned against systemically cruel detention and deportation practices, since the Rau and Alvarez cases and the Georgiou-Moylan group's advocacy of more humane approaches in the coalition parties. But questions of acts of cruelty and criminality towards boat people at or approaching our maritime borders are still sensitive areas where most people and organisations do not wish to go. We would rather not know and that is what has made the government's continued cover-ups in this area much easier to achieve. Most of the media has turned its back on issues of illegal government activity in maritime border protection.

CL: Has the climate of the public service changed much in Australia in recent years?

TK: Yes. We can no longer rely on a public "presumption of regularity" about government agencies' official conduct. The rule now, especially in anything to do with national security and border security, is "whatever it takes" and do whatever is needed to deny and cover it up afterwards. This is a major theme of my book.

CL: Who or what is responsible for these changes?

TK: Mostly, but not only, Howard, Ruddock, Reith, Hill, Downer and Vanstone. Howard as PM must take major responsibility. Labor set many of these harsher border control philosophies and systems in motion in the 1980s to early 1990s and there is residual sympathy for them in some areas of the Labor Party even now. But the systemic cruelty, xenophobia and fanaticism has come mostly from these Liberal Ministers. No leader of the ALP opposition ever really challenged this culture in moral terms. They left it to Georgiou's group to do so.

CL: Are the general public's opinions of the SIEV X incident formed as much from political leanings than humanitarian concerns?

TK: I hope not, this should not be seen as a political issue, it is about our values of truth and justice and our national responsibility for the lives of all who come under Australia's duty of care. I don't know—different people respond to the SIEV X story differently. For some the focus is humanitarian and I respect that. Clearly, there is no political mileage for any major party in pursuing truth and justice on SIEV X, as Senators Cook, Faulkner, Collins and Bartlett found. In the end it comes down to one's personal ethics and vision for Australia. I have been a bit disappointed at the legal profession's lack of interest in SIEV X as opposed to detention abuses. Perhaps it was just too hard to engage with.

CL: If justice is to be served, what should happen from here?

TK: As the Senate has three times demanded, an independent full-powers judicial enquiry into SIEV X and the people smuggling disruption program, with the power to send people who lie under oath to jail, no matter who they are. But which PM or potential PM from either party would commission such an enquiry?

CL: If I am concerned about what happened to SIEV X, just what exactly can I do?

TK: Write to your Senators and opposition party leaders. Let them know you care about this unfinished issue that shames our nation. If you are a teacher or academic, tell your students about it. Study my book as a case study of Australian government gone off-the-rails. Ask your law, politics, public administration, defence studies or history departments to put it on reading lists. Librarians, encourage people to read it.

© Copyright Civil Liberty. 2005