Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice, Customs and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Joint Select Committee on the Christmas Island Tragedy, I present the committee's report of the inquiry into the Christmas Island tragedy of 15 December 2010, incorporating additional comments. I seek leave to make a short statement in connection with the report.

Leave granted.

The Christmas Island tragedy occurred on 15 December last year. Obviously, the events of that day are very well known to members of this House and indeed are very well known to the Australian people in general. They have been very well documented. The parliament asked this committee in March to look into the response of government agencies to that tragedy. We did so in conjunction with a number of other inquiries that are ongoing, in particular the Western Australian coroner's inquiry, which is yet to report on its findings.

We also did so in relation to some other internal inquiries that the government itself had undertaken. The Australian Customs and Border Protection Service undertook an internal investigation into the way it responded to this event. One of the refere­nces given to our committee was to look at that report and comment on the findings that the Customs and Border Protection Service had reached.

The events of 15 December last year are deeply disturbing. It is impossible to confirm the exact number of people who died but 30 are certainly confirmed dead and 20 are missing, presumed dead. It is also important to note, though, that as a result of the actions of Australian officers and officials on that day, 42 people survived. There is no doubt in my mind, having visited the scene of the tragedy and from the evidence that we heard, those 42 would certainly not have survived. Without the very brave actions on that day by Australian Defence Force personnel, Customs officers and Australian Federal Police, there is no question in my mind that those 42 people would not have survived this terrible tragedy.

The events are very familiar to most Australians. At around 5.40 am on 15 December, the vessel that came to be known as SIEV221 was visually spotted off Christmas Island. According to evidence we heard, the sea state and the weather conditions off Christmas Island that day were the worst for 30 years. The visual footage that we saw showed a sea state that was just unparalleled in its ferocity. It was a sea state which made it impossible for vessels to be launched from Christmas Island at any stage. The harbour at Christmas Island was closed and had been closed for a couple of days prior to 15 December.

Once the vessel was visually spotted—and I will go in a few minutes to whether it was possible that it was spotted by other means, because that was raised extensively after these events—authorities notified the naval vessel HMAS Pirie and the Customs vessel ACV Triton which were sheltering on the leeward side of the island because of the very severe weather state. They made their way as quickly as possible to the scene of the tragedy, which was Rocky Point at Christmas Island—just off the coast of the settlement.

Because of the sea state, they were forced to deploy RHIBs—the small, inflatable rigid-hull vessels that they have on those vessels—to Rocky Point. Personnel were given instructions to do all they could to help people who obviously were in very serious distress. It was not originally known that the vessel was floundering against the rocks. That became known only after the initial calls were made to those vessels.

The captains of those vessels told the men in the RHIBs to do all they could in the face of very difficult circumstances. Those people in the RHIBs who went into that sea state deserve to know that the Australian people would be very proud of their efforts. We saw footage that was taken from the naval vessels on that day. What they did was no less than extraordinary. They did so at very great danger to themselves and we can count ourselves lucky that nobody from those vessels was killed or injured. It was because of their bravery that those 42 people were saved. Without the fact that they were prepared to go in and risk their own safety in such a terrible sea state, there is no question that those 42 people would have perished along with, presumably, the other 50 people who did.

As well as the people who responded from those RHIBs, there were people who responded from the shore, including Austr­alian Federal Police officers, Customs officers and also Christmas Island residents who went down and stood on the cliffs. They tried to get safety vests to the people who were clearly in a very difficult situation with their boat floundering on the rocks. People were thrown into the water. There was a great deal of diesel in the water after it leaked from the vessel.

We spoke extensively to people on the island who had responded. They did all they could, of course, to help people but there was very little that they could do in an effective way to save lives. They told us very disturbing stories of being quite close to people who were clearly in distress and in need of their help. Even though they made their best endeavours they found it imposs­ible to get to them—with the exception of one person who jumped on the rocks and was saved that way. It was impossible for them to launch any vessels to help. It was very, very difficult for them to help from the rocky cliffs, even though, it is important to note, they certainly used their best endeavours to do so. With any tragedy like this, there is a tendency to cast around for blame. With the sea state as it was, however, this could be classified, despite the best endeavours made by Australian officials on the day, as a terrible, terrible act of God. If we are to allocate blame, it lies of course with the people smugglers who are sending people down to face these extraordinarily difficult circumstances. I think it is very important to note that, although SIEV221 will be seared in the minds of all Australians from the horror of the footage that we all saw, there are other people who have almost certainly gone missing while making that terrible journey. They are not at the front of our minds because we do not have that same visual confirmation of the terrible way they met their end. But there is certainly a lot of credible evidence that vessels have left Indonesia and have not subsequently been spotted by Australian authorities—the people on board those vessels have not been heard from again. So clearly, along with SIEV221, other vessels have left Indonesia and have met very unfortunate ends. While people smugglers continue to smuggle people down to Australia in this way, the potential for a repeat of this tragedy certainly remains.

I wanted to touch very briefly on two other issues. Those issues are the surveil­lance issues—what might have been known about the arrival of SIEV221—and the intelligence issues raised with the committee in relation to the SIEV221 tragedy. Firstly, with the surveillance issues—and there has again been some media reporting in relation to this over the weekend—there is no surveillance system available to the Australian government which is able to detect wooden hulled boats in such a terrible and violent sea state. The committee looked extensively at these matters—whether it would have been possible to have had or whether the Australian authorities did have advance notice of SIEV221 arriving—and we have been able to confirm that SIEV221 was not able to be spotted by regular surveillance and that, as a result, the first time it was spotted was when it arrived on Christmas Island on that morning. It was just spotted visually by someone on the island. I think that is very important because we certainly had submissions made by people putting forward a different view. We have been able to satisfy ourselves, both with the public evidence and evidence heard in camera, that the first time SIEV221 was spotted was when it arrived on the island that morning.

Secondly, as touched on in the committee report, there is a very robust intelligence process in relation to illegal arrivals coming down to Australia. It gets information from many sources which is then distilled by a grouping every day. They obviously need to use their best efforts to sort credible intelligence from the myriad sources from which they are getting information on any given day. The committee heard evidence in relation to that and I was also given a private briefing in my shadow capacity. I feel very satisfied that the intelligence community did all they could, based on the information they had, in relation to the arrival of SIEV221. The committee can certainly say, I think with some positivity, that the intelligence processes worked reasonably well in the case of SIEV221 and that no Australian authority had any prior knowledge of its impending arrival on Christmas Island on 15 December.

This is a report that all members of the committee were able to put their name to: members of the government, members of the opposition, members of the Australian Greens and—now former—Independent Senator Steve Fielding. I think that is very important. These were terrible events and it is a good indication that both houses of the Australian parliament can come together, look at the events and make findings that all members of the parliament are comfortable putting their name to. I am proud of the efforts of the committee. I thank the chair, Senator Gavin Marshall, for his efforts and I thank the other members of the committee. I believe that this is a good example of the parliamentary process working as well as it can.

See this speech in context