Letter to the Editor, "Touching on raw nerves", from Tony Kevin, published in Australian Book Review, August 2005 issue:

 

Dear Editor,

Craig Sherborne suggested that I should be indignant at Hannie Rayson's play "Two Brothers", as author of one of the reference works cited in her program notes (Australian Book Review, June). I have not yet seen the play which I understand to be a free-ranging fictional melodrama, but look forward to seeing it soon in Canberra. Alcott's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was such a melodrama - but it had enormous impact in raising public consciousness of the cruelties of slavery as practiced in the United States in the first half of the 19th century.

Is it badly written? I will judge that when I see it. Does it misrepresent the cruelties and indifference to human life of the Operation Relex border protection regime in late 2001? I don't think so. Many lives were lost in that period, and the causes have yet to be explained.

Fact: Palapa, the disabled adrift boat rescued by Tampa, nearly sank in a fierce storm the night before, with over 400 people on board. It had been twice spotted on the previous day by an Australian Coastwatch aircraft. The pilot reported the passengers waved clothing to indicate their distress, but no rescue boat was sent out from Christmas Island just 60 miles away on that day - a clear violation of Australia's legal and ethical rescue at sea obligations.

Fact: Two people died when an impounded SIEV boat under ADF guard in Ashmore Lagoon caught fire and sank.

Fact: Under direct orders from Canberra, over 200 people were left on board a crippled, unseaworthy SIEV 4 (Olong) during a 22 hour circular holding tow by HMAS Adelaide, just outside Christmas Island's Australian territorial seas, When the boat suddenly began to founder, the people were instructed to jump into the water. They were then left up to 51 minutes in the water or in Adelaide's rubber dinghies before Adelaide received permission to allow them onboard. It is a miracle none drowned during this extended process of violation of rescue at sea obligations.

Fact: SIEV X (on which 353 persons drowned) sank in the Operation Relex border protection zone, 60 miles south of Indonesia (a fact not yet admitted by Australian authorities, but easily demonstrable from official Australian and Indonesian data sources). The ADF did not conduct any aerial safety of life at sea search for the boat, assuming that the boat had either gone back to Indonesia or had not set out.

Fact: Maps based on RAAF routine air surveillance flight data supplied to the Senate investigating committee appear to have removed data pertaining to the presence of SIEV X and of Indonesian rescuing boats that picked up 45 survivors the next day in the Operation Relex zone.

Fact: Australian Federal Police Commissioner Keelty declined to give evidence to the Senate committee on "what information the AFP held about the departure, seaworthiness and ultimate fate of SIEV X; the manner in which the AFP came into possession of that information; and the specific actions taken by the AFP with that information, including whom we told and when".

Fact: The AFP still, after four years, refuses to make public the list of names of the 421 persons who sailed on SIEV X - information that it has admitted it has in its possession, from an undisclosed source.

Given such facts, which still remain protected from proper public judicial inquiry as to possible criminality, despite three motions passed over three years by the Senate, I can only applaud Rayson's courage in writing a fictional melodrama inspired by such a disturbing public record. The unusually energetic efforts by some reviewers and commentators to discredit the play are predictable. The play has clearly touched on raw nerves in government circles. That may be a measure of its effectiveness as a play.

Tony Kevin, Forrest, ACT.