Today more SIEV-X, including the ever-so-helpful personal briefing Matt Brown, Defence Minister Robert Hill’s chief of staff, gave to The Australian last week on the SIEV-X surveillance maps – maps Hill still has not given the unthrown children inquiry.
Then the remarks on SIEV-X by outgoing chief of the defence force Admiral Chris Barrie and incoming navy chief Admiral Chris Ritchie at today’s handover ceremony to the ADF’s new leadership team. To end, readers comment on the state of journalism as discussed on Late Night Live’s journos forum this week and more Webdiarists out themselves as members of the audience.
It’s a waiting game now on SIEV-X – waiting until Robert Hill has finished exclusive briefings to The Australian on the defence task force report before he deigns to give it to the inquiry for which the task force prepared the report.
You have to feel sorry for the Defence Force people. They’re not allowed to tell the story as they see it because their political master is too busy playing pay-back and media manipulation games with it to suit his petty political agenda. Three hundred and fiftythree people dead by drowning – what better topic to play games with. And why should the defence minister, of all people, care that he’s wrecked Defence’s careful process of rebuilding the media’s confidence in it after the children overboard fiasco, where Peter Reith banned them from saying anything so he could perpetrate his lies. Hill began his tenure telling defence to be open. Now he’s playing Reith’s game.
The contempt Hill is showing to the Senate unthrown children inquiry is simply staggering. The inquiry has had to look up Webdiary to see the navy’s surveillance maps. The maps and the SIEV-X report have been on Hill’s desk for ages, after he told Defence to send it to him and he’d send it on to the inquiry. Yesterday, Defence was reduced to lobbying Hill to get the documents it thinks will clear up the SIEV-X mystery to the inquiry now. No luck – Hill promised the inquiry the documents today; they didn’t come.
Hills game, it seems, is to drip feed The Australian so the report is old news by the time everyone else gets the documents.
All this comes after Hill destroyed the navy’s chance to get its maps into the public arena 12 days ago. The defence force task force chief, Admiral Raydon Gates, was scheduled to give evidence on June 21. That week, partly in response to Herald questions, the navy plotted aerial surveillance patterns on the crucial SIEV-X days. The week before, Hill banned Gates giving evidence. On Network Nine’s Sunday program on June 16 he unbanned him under tough questioning.
On Wednesday Defence advised the Herald that it wouldn’t answer our questions because Gates would do so at the hearing on the 21st. Believe it or not, Hill had rebanned him in a letter to the inquiry but hadn’t told Defence! And the reason? Not to stop Gates giving evidence on SIEV-X, but on witness tampering.
It was Gates who blew the whistle on an alleged attempt by an officer in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Brendon Hammer, to interfere with the testimony of Commander Stefan King, who told Hammer the children overboard photos were fraudulent on October 11. An attempt to tamper with a witness to an inquiry is self-evidently within the terms of reference of that inquiry, yet Hill pretended it wasn’t and asserts the Senate will have to extend its terms of reference before Gates can give evidence. Another political game, yet more contempt for the inquiry and the Defence Force.
Hill thus stuffed Defence’s attempt to explain to the public its search patterns on the day SIEV-X departed and the day it sank.
I’ve got hold of briefing notes Matt Brown apparently gave The Australian to accompany the maps he leaked the paper. So you’re aware of Hill’s current spin here are Brown’s notes.
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SIEV-X surveillance
By Matt Brown
This will form the basis of a new submission from Defence to the Committee which we hope will correct a lot of the ‘assumptions’ relating to surveillance.
They are in addition to the declassified summary of intelligence which will be provided to the Committee.
The bottom line is that we are looking for all illegal vessels entering our surveillance zone.
SLIDE A-1 (MAP 1 in Webdiary maps archive)
Shows the full “Charlie” surveillance zone relevant to this issue. There were two other aerial surveillance zones used to capture other routes to mainland. PLEASE NOTE – the blue line is the 24nm zone where Orions did not fly. You will note the Charlie zone line crosses it in some places – this is only because the map they’ve drawn connects coordinates with straight lines (it can’t draw curved lines), so it’s a technical glitch. The planes would not fly beyond the blue line – the first 12nm is sovereign Indonesian territory, the second 12nm is a “contiguous zone” recognised under UNCLOS (the International Convention on the Law of the Sea). While I’m not sure if Indonesia actually claims this zone, Australia, as a signatory of UNCLOS, recognises it. It is also primarily used as a ‘buffer’ to ensure our planes don’t fly into the more important 12nm sovereign area.
The surveillance zone is approx 34,600 square nautical miles.
The times expressed on these maps are local times in the Charlie surveillance zone.
Defence advises that there was one full surveillance flight flown each today – the times of which varied from day to day. I can explain this once you’ve looked at the maps.
They had to fly approx 2 hours 40 minutes from the mainland before they entered the zone. They would then spend 4 to 5 hours covering the zone (dependent on weather and level of activity) before returning to the mainland.
It was standard for them to start their fly patterns from the south and work their way north before departing. I can explain that too.
Importantly, Defence advises that all radar contacts on the 18th and 19th scheduled daily flights were visually identified.
The flight patterns on the maps are indicative only – they show the general pattern followed. The distance between flight tracks would depend on weather and atmospherics and how they impacted on radar range. We can talk about that too.
SLIDE A-2 (MAP 2 – Flight path, the morning of October 18, the day SIEV-X departed Indonesia)
Gives the general pattern of surveillance flown that day.
Flight entered at 0935 and left 1411.
The aircrew assessed that the flight achieved 100 percent surveillance of area Charlie and 25 contacts were located. Slide A-3 (MAP 3) gives these contacts. 21 were visually identified – 2 as merchant vessels and 19 as fishing vessels. (Two of the contacts were multiple fishing vessels so you want (sic) see 25 dots on the map.) The other four were detected within the 24nm Indonesian zone so were therefore not visually identified.
SLIDE A-5 (MAP 5, flight path on the morning of October 19, the day SIEV-X sunk)
Shows the flight pattern for the scheduled flight of Oct 19.
Entered zone at 0530 and left 1044 – 5 hours 14 minutes in the zone.
You will note it detected SIEV 6 in the southern zone. (Margo: Intelligence reported to the PM’s people smuggling task force on October 18 says two boats left Indonesia that day – SIEV-6 and SIEV-X.)
Why hadn’t SIEV 6 been picked up further north? This comes back to staggering the times of the daily surveillance flight.
It is possible that SIEVs can enter the northern zone after the daily surveillance flight. The reasons the flights are at different times is if you miss them on one day in the north, you can still spot them the next day in the south before they reach Christmas Island. You simply can’t have 24 hour a day aerial surveillance.
The aircrew reported 100 percent surveillance of area Charlie with a 75% probability of detection in the northern areas. This acknowledges the simple fact that radar is not perfect and the weather conditions on the 19th were not as favourable as they were on the 18th.
The flight detected 37 contacts in the zone – 8 visually identified as merchant ships and 22 as fishing vessels (again some were multiple detections so the numbers don’t match up exactly on the slide.) A further 7 contacts were not identified as they were either outside of the zone or inside the Indonesian 24nm zone.
SLIDE A-7 (MAP 7, flight path on the afternoon of October 19, when SIEV-X sank)
While the Orions flew a daily flight to cover the entire zone, the HMAS Arunta had a helicopter which flew surveillance flights as required over the southern zone to support the ship. It is important to understand that helo flights did not cover the full zone and were never intended to. They flew close in to Christmas Island in support of our ships.
On the 19th, the HMAS Arunta helicopter was out of service. Navy requested an additional Orion flight to cover its absence.
The flight path is shown at Slide A-7.
Into zone at 1644 and deported at 2115 – 4 hours 31 minutes.
The flight concentrated on the southern zone as per above – it’s what the helicopter was supposed to do. As noted in our letters to the SMH and Age, bad weather reduced the flights ability to proceed any further north so the whole Charlie area was not covered. (As noted, the helicopter would not have covered the whole area.)
It only covered 95% of the two southern quadrants because of bad weather.
You will note that Slide A-8 (MAP 8) shows only one radar contact in the north-west sector. Poor weather meant they didn’t have the flight endurance to check it. You should also note that this is after the time that SIEV X reportedly sank – so it could not be it. The one contact could also (speculation) give an indication of the deteriorating weather conditions leading to vessels leaving the area – that’s my speculation, not ADF (Australian Defence Force).
SLIDE A-9 (MAP 9, flight path on the morning of October 20, when Indonesian fishing boats picked up survivors)
Flight path for normal flight Oct 20.
Entered 0535 and departed 1046.
Achieved 100% of southwest and northwest sectors, 90% of northeast and 45% of southeast.
This, of course, is after SIEV X sank. Differing reports say the survivors were picked up between “just after dawn” or as late as 1000.
Boats were detected on radar and visually identified at around 0800 in the northwest sector.
Importantly none of the accounts from survivors have indicated that a plane was heard overhead so it’s unlikely that the Orion flew straight over the top of them.
RE – SUBSEQUENT DAYS
As I said, a full aerial surveillance was done each day.
October 21 – 1250 to 1724
October 22 – 0628 to 1125
October 23 – 1225 to 1744
Again, please note that the times bounce around and that this is standard practice. We don’t want the conspiracy theorists accusing us of scheduling our flights to avoid the chance of seeing SIEV X. (Margo: What a strange remark! SIEV-X was well and truly sunk, 353 people well and truly drowned and 44 survivors well and truly picked up by two Indonesian fishing boats by October 21. And who is the “we” – he’s not including the Australian reporter in his little conspiracy, surely.)
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TONY KEVIN on the maps
A few quick reactions:
* Note how the words “Sunda Strait” are persistantly misplaced on all the maps, way out to sea in the Indian Ocean. This is quite seriously misleading. Was it accidental, or was it done to try to bolster the false claim that SIEV-X sank in the Sunda Strait?
* The afternoon 19 October flight path map (MAP 7) is striking. Look how (after the storm encounter) fuel and flying time were subsequently wasted in the southeastern quarter which could have been applied to the vital, in a search-and-rescue sense, northwest quarter.
* Note how on 18 October the Orions were detecting vessels up to 20 miles outside the limits of the NW surveillance zone, going up towards and into Sunda Strait, but not on 19 or 20 October. Were there really fewer boats around in these locations on 19 and 20 than on 18 (hard to see why) or weren’t they looking so far outside their zone boundary on these two days? If so, why?
These maps reinforce the importance of Senators quizzing Orion flight commanders on how they operated (see my piece in Peeling the onion) and – especially – if they had been briefed to look out for SIEV X on any of these flights, and if so what information they were given?
On the Commander Banks precedent, I don’t see how ADF could try to refuse to give the Committee access to flight commanders. After all, nobody died on SIEV 4 – 353 died on SIEV X. Australian surveillance activity is now a crucial issue.
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CHANGING THE WATCH
Vice Admiral C.A. Ritchie AO RAN
My primary message today is rightly to the members of the Navy, both uniformed and civilian and to those who work in close support of us in industry. I know, as do the majority of people in this country, that you are doing a great job for Australia. Navy has a high public profile and is well regarded for its operational competence. We must value that reputation and work together to nurture it and remove any misconceptions that will put it at risk. There are a few of those around and their correction is of great importance to me.
Admiral Chris Barrie
I would also like to address today some of the genuine concerns raised by a number of commentators over the deaths of approximately 353 asylum seekers from the vessel now known as SIEV-X. While this was a tragic event, the Australian Defence Force cannot be responsible for the deaths of those people. Our ships and aircraft received no distress calls. None of the vessels detected by our aerial surveillance around that time gave us any indication that they were aware of any vessel in distress, or had picked up survivors.
Moreover, our mission was directed specifically at enabling the Australian Defence Force to act when it could have a lawful authority to do so. That is, when vessels approached suspected of carrying asylum seekers, approached Australian waters. Not on the high seas and not in another country’s waters.
The first indication received that the vessel had foundered was on the 23rd October.
Let me remind you that the Navy has a proud record of rescue at sea. You may recall the crew of HMAS Adelaide, courageously rescuing all the survivors from SIEV-IV when it foundered.
Advice available to Defence on when and from where SIEV-X departed was contradictory and it did not provide a basis for changing surveillance patterns.
Some commentators had concluded that the position of the sinking of SIEV-X is known. The fact is the position where the vessel foundered is unknown and all attempts to estimate the location are speculative at best.
Senior Defence Force Officers testifying before the Senate Select Committee in Estimates have provided detailed information on Operation Relics. Unfortunately their factual testimony has been incorrectly construed by some to imply that we deliberately pulled back our aerial surveillance in mid-October of 2001 to the vicinity of Christmas Island. In fact, we continued to survey the area and we did not pull back the surveillance as suggested.
None of the surveillance flights detected the SIEV-X vessel. I am scandalised that some people seriously believe that we somehow changed our modus operandi to deliberately avoid detecting this vessel.
The men and women of the Australian Defence Force that I lead stand ready to assist people in distress, as we have always done. However, we can only effect rescue when we are aware there is a vessel in distress.
READERS ON SIEV-X
Simon Kelly
Partly in response to comments made by Hamish Tweedy in The truth is out there… and by others elsewhere, I’d like to make the obvious point that there is more to this than just one isolated incident.
As was shown by the ABC’s 4 Corners earlier this year, the PM’s office had direct input into what would happen to a boatload of Afghanis intercepted near Ashmore Island. Instead of following normal operating procedure, the Navy was to hold them at Ashmore for a matter of days before word came through they were to be escorted to Indonesian waters. On the way towards Indonesia the Afghani’s were allegedly ‘restrained’ with capsicum spray and electric batons. Once left in Indonesian waters the ship sank and at least three people are believed to have drowned – all because the PM didn’t want them interfering with election coverage. (A Prime Minister surreptitiously demanding a leaky wooden boat, overcrowded and unseaworthy be taken out of Australian waters during the middle of an election campaign is not leadership, it is manipulative, opportunistic, spineless and cowardly behaviour. I for one expect far greater moral judgement and a far more ethical approach from a leader.)
This, after Tampa, the disgraceful handling by government ministers and their staff of the ‘children overboard’ photographs and the ridiculously expensive and unnecessary ‘Pacific solution’ is not responsible government.
No-one is trying to denigrate the men and women serving on the ships of the RAN, or the Orions of the RAAF. But the fact is they have become the ones doing the Goverment’s dirty work. It is not written policy that is being followed but cynical politics.
I say good on you to the journos putting in the effort to peel all those onions.
PS: Regarding SIEV-X, we hear everyone heard it first on CNN. How did CNN find out? (Margo: Here’s how, courtesy of the original CNN story. This is the only story to state that SIEV-X had a radio on board.)
Migrant ship sinks; most of those aboard killed
October 22, 2001 Posted: 8:24 PM EDT (0024 GMT)
GENEVA, Switzerland (CNN) — A boat carrying 400 migrants sank in the Java Sea Friday night, and all but 44 of the passengers are believed to have drowned, the International Organization for Migration said here Monday.
Spokesman Jean-Philippe Chauzy said the boat left Java last Thursday morning with 421 people aboard. He said 21 people demanded to be let off and were left on an island.
Later, he said, the captain radioed that the engine had failed and the boat was sinking.
He quoted survivors as saying that the boat went down quickly, and that they were picked up Saturday morning by local fishermen.
Chauzy said the ultimate destination of the boat was unknown but migrants frequently use such voyages as a way of reaching Australia.
He said most of the passengers were Iraqis but there were also Iranians, Palestinians, and Algerians on board.
Every year thousands of migrants pass through the waters of southeast Asia in their search for better lives. Many who leave Indonesia head for Australia.
In August a Norwegian freighter rescued more than 400 people from a sinking Indonesian ferry off the coast of Christmas Island. Australia refused entry to the asylum seekers and they were eventually sent to New Zealand and to the remote Pacific island of Nauru.
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Hamish Tweedy
I concede that it is your job to question and investigate, I am also prepared to concede that in fulfilling this role you become vulnerable to the charge of having become a partisan participant in the process and am happy to accept that your motives are journalistic and apologise for questioning your motives (although I don’t believe I was too wide of the mark on your opinion of the Government Ministers involved).
I cannot however escape the feeling that the way this whole SIEV issue has been framed has a lot to do with people who felt that John Howard exploited the refugee situation to win the last election trying to force a few pigeons home to roost. By that I mean John Faulkner leading the questioning and the lack of subpoenas. I imagine that this appearance whether a reality or not is likely to make judgements about what the inquiry means necessarily partial and ultimately futile.
In the end what I object to is, that the RAN will be apportioned a share of the blame (either publicly or by inference) for the deaths of 353 people and I don’t think they should.
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David Dowell
The consistent spin of the Liberals and their apologists is that it is an attack on the Navy. Nonsense, we just want to know what happened. Each time there is new information the story changes.
I pay for the Navy, the task force, the camps, etc. I want to know. The same apologists are screaming for the details of the “Kernot Secret”. I am waiting for one of them to use the “War on Terrorism” as the reason it must be revealed. Do we know who issued the order not to “Humanise or Personalise”. Has this been revealed in the inquiry? (
As for the attacks on Webdiary, why does it worry them so? Why are we constantly being told to shut up and stop asking questions.
Margo: Peter Reith’s media adviser Ross Hampton (now media flak for health minister Brendan Nelson and banned by Cabinet from giving evidence to the unthrown children inquiry) gave the don’t humanise, don’t personalise order to Brian Humphreys, director-general of communication strategies at Defence.
JOURNALISM
For a pessimistic stake on the state of journalism today, see http://www.nybooks.com/articles/15581. Former New York Times correspondent Russell Baker describes “journalism’s age of melancholy” in What else is news?
Jenny Forster
I was at the Late Night Live forum and I didn’t go up and shake your hand either. (See David Eastwood in yesterday’s Webdiary.) I thought Neil from Redfern or Newtown or wherever Crullers lurks sounded like an idiot when he said to listen to Price. Maybe I just didn’t get it.
Re Webdiarist Hamish Tweedy’s comment – “I think you know it is a political stunt (much like the ABC) but really don’t care. If the Opposition thought the inquiry was anything more than a political stunt they would issue the subpoenas” – It is absurd to suggest the ABC can do any investigative journalism of this sort as it would be assumed to have an anti-government agenda and a result in mind.
Apart from a couple of pointed questions from Kerry or a report on 4 corners ( which the lawyers have whitewashed for a week prior) or Adams talking to the converted (the 2.3% converted according to Crullers on crikey.com) the ABC is in a state of stall due to all the axe grinders.
PS: What has happened to David Davis? I am actually missing the boomer bashing. (Margo: He’s promised he’ll be back soon. I miss him too.)
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Con Vaitsas
I went along to the ABC forum and found the debate by the journos stimulating, but the questions asked by the public were very disappointing. Most didn’t focus on what is wrong with journalism but on various issues not within the confines of the topic – mostly the asylum seekers and the ABC.
Unfortunately the show ended before I got my chance to ask a question. One of the reasons why many people are turned off by the media is because they keep reading/hearing the same opinion makers. Why does the print media have such an emphasis on using commentators who are related? We have the Gerard & Anne Henderson, Robert & Anne Manne, Dennis & Angela Shanahan, the Devine family…..
You made a comment about Michelle Grattan being eased out of the SMH. Sure she is considered an excellent journo but she is too damn polite and boring in her stories. She is dealing with politicians who are now highly skilled and given comprehensive training in how to handle the media, but Michelle and too many other jounos treat these people like novices.
We the readers want some BITE, we don’t want politicians to pull the wool over the eyes of the media and consequently the public. I want news stories to feature all the facts and not use ambiguous language that can be code for a completely different meaning. Opinions should be written separately.
Is this too much to ask for? If some respected media commentators/journos have to be sacrificed, so be it.
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Cloud
I listened with interest to the media forum, apropos of which you may be interested to read this excerpt of an email from Dave McKay at the Woomera Refugee Embassy:
“As you know, there has been a lot of media interest in the role of the Refugee Embassy in relation to the refugee breakout, including interviews with BBC World News, CNN, and some European News mob. However, media interest here in Australia has had a bit of a nasty touch to it, heavily orchestrated by DIMIA.
“ABC Radio’s PM crew did an interview with me yesterday, and they really beat up a two-word message that I received from the “Desert Liberation Front”, which was merely that the escapees had reached “relative safety”. The interviewer did a bit to make something more of that than it was (and never even bothered to ask how old that piece of information was… it was, in fact, quite old), and then their news crew beat it up a bit more, until it became the second lead story on their news broadcasts throughout the night, as though they had some really strong evidence regarding the whereabouts of the escapees. The truth is that they had NOTHING.
“What bothers us is that the media takes the REAL information that we have and says, “We don’t believe it,” and then when we say we DON’T really know much, they invent things that we have not said. We have had several reports from journalists that DIMIA is pushing them to create a picture of a conspiracy which would justify even greater oppression and secrecy at Woomera. The amazing thing is how much the media (even the ABC, surprisingly) has either knowingly or unknowingly, co-operated with it. ”
…
This battle is hard enough without activists having to fight misinformation and biased slants in the media.