Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I again express my disappointment at the low road which the Liberal opposition are prepared to go down. Can I indicate that the reference I saw to 170 people I think was in an article by Andrew Bolt, who seems to have very similar lines to the opposition on such matters. I am not sure who writes whose stuff. But I cannot confirm how many people may have drowned in the sense of whether they drowned in Indonesian waters, in Sri Lankan waters or in other waters off Malaysia et cetera. I have no capacity to accurately describe who or the numbers of persons who might have drowned. There are a number of cases that we know of, such as the Sri Lankan expedition where we rescued a Sri Lankan boat. Clearly people had left that boat and swum, and they were missing and presumed drowned. As we know, we had the deaths of SIEV36, when the fire on the boat occurred and at least four died then. But there have been other reports from Indonesia at various times about persons having drowned. There was one only a day or two ago, as yet unconfirmed. I think the Indonesians have confirmed potentially two persons drowned, but there are reports that there were more. These things clearly are not capable of being confirmed by us. We have to rely on other authorities.

But we do not accept responsibility for those deaths, Senator, just as I remember you did not accept responsibility for the 380 or so people who died on SIEVX. I do not remember you coming into the Senate saying you as the government of the day took responsibility for those deaths. It is an outrageous claim. It does you no credit at all and I suggest the moderates in the Liberal Party just have a think about where they are headed with this sort of attack.