In Auckland on his final voyage, Rinnan spoke in practical broken English to a special meeting of 100 Afghans gathered in his honour. Flowers cards and gifts were offered in appreciation to the hero, whose name was second in international celebrity only to Mayor Giuliani of New York4. To many, Rinnan was more than a celebrity; he was a genuine hero fashioned in the traditional meaning of the word.

For the Australian government however, Rinnan and the MV Tampa asylum seeker rescue and the legacy of notoriety left by the Tampa and subsequent events, including the infamous ‘children overboard scandal,’ generated enough unanswered questions significant enough to force a full senate enquiry. From the facts released during the senate enquiry, David Marr and Marian Wilkinson researched and wrote Dark Victory:released in March 2003.

While interviewing Marr about Dark Victory for ABC Radio National, Philip Adams remarked in his introductory statement in order to contextualize the book:

Dark Victory has taken information gained from the senate enquiry and humanizes those refugees who boarded boats for Australia during the 2001 federal election period. In doing this Marr and Wilkinson have subverted a government agenda, which was aimed at dehumanising the refugee issue, a plan accomplished by isolating asylum seekers from the media and the Australian people. Dark Victory begins with an account of those stranded on the Palapa, reproducing the desperate rescue bid by the crew on the Scandinavian tanker, the MV Tampa.

Further more, Dark Victory has revealed concisely, the sequence of events in which the Australian Government through the offices of the Prime Minister, under the charge of Moore-Wilton, attempted to badger Indonesia into taking responsibility for the people on the Palapa. The book also tells how the government also tried to threaten and bluff Rinnan into taking the people to Indonesia:

The book is explicit on what transpired when Authorities delivered an ultimatum:

Dark Victory has laid the responsibility for the decision to stop the Tampa at the feet of Prime Minister John Howard. The bookhas reinforced the idea that Howard’s decision began as a game of bluff. As evidence for this assumption, Dark Victory explains that no legal advice appears to have been sought at a senior level. Neither before Australian authorities question Rinnan’s judgement, nor when they later threatened him under the Immigration acts as a people smuggler. Senior officers of the Attorney General’s Department only learnt of this later- with dismay6. In taking this position, Dark victory has positioned the government in this instance, as an incompetent bully, and Rinnan and the asylum seekers, as its unwitting victims.

Marr said, about the above issue, while talking on ABC Radio National to Philip Adams:

In Dark Victory, Marr has asserted the Australia official violated norms related to the worlds understanding of how the Tampa should be treated in the aftermath of the rescue. Dark Victory discusses how the Wilhelmsen line and Rinnon believed, that Australia was not compelled by law to land the Palapa survivors. The book points to an inconsistency or hole in international law that Australian officials exploited, under the guise of border protection8.

During the Radio National interview Marr explained that the Government position was that there was no need for recourse to law, because there was no law, and that bullying would work on the Norwegian government and Rinnan. Marr said:

Further to these issues, Dark Victory has recorded in detail the role sections of the Australian defence force played from the time that SAS troops were called upon to clear the Asylum seekers off the Tampa and onto the troop ship Manoora. While the book has not exonerated or justified the actions of the Australian forces, it does take care to present them in a perspective that highlights the difficulty of their position during the episode with the survivors of the Palapa. Dark Victory has re-counted later instances in which Special-Forces were allegedly brutal to refugees during the operations enforced under operation Relex and the Pacific Solution.

While talking about Dark Victory, Marr said of the Navy:

In regards to the asylum seekers on board the Tampa, Marr has said in Dark Victory, at the end of the chapter entitled ‘Australia Versus the Boatpeople’, that Howard had not yet taken the decision to blockade the Indian Ocean but that the Tampa changed those circumstances. Howard decided to use the Tampa as an example to the world that Australia was not an easy touch for illegal immigrants. The book explains reason behind Howard’s timing and reason for the decision to make an example of the Tampa in these terms:

Adams asked Marr if Ruddock raised the issue of physical interferences with people smugglers boats, to which Marr indicated:

The book Dark Victory has suggested that the minister put it jokingly that they could interfere with boats, in these terms:

The book explains:

By marrying the subject of Ruddock’s conversations at the meeting in Jakarta to the interview with the Indonesian intelligence officer, it is possible to read Dark Victory as strongly implicating probable Australian activity in the circumstances, which bought about the necessity for the Tampa’s rescue of the people stranded on the Palapa.

On Radio National Marr explained the ominous circumstances of such boats that fail midway between Indonesia and Australia, on their way to Christmas Island or Ashmore reef:

In Dark victory, Marr named the particular manifestation of Australian bureaucracy that failed to organize a rescue for the Palapa as being the Rescue coordination centre of Australia (RCC) 14. Marr say of the RCC on radio:

Dark victory has made it clear that the Australian government was trying to get the Indonesian authorities to take responsibility for the Palapa. Marr said on Radio National that this was a completely despicable thing to do:

Dark victory has made the point that Australia [the government] was not naive, that it knew a huge amount of what was going on in terms of people trafficking, and Mar clarifies this point to Radio National in these terms:

Dark Victory has made the point that Rinnan was threatened with imprisonment in Australia and on Radio National Marr explained on what grounds the Australian authorities sought to do this18:

Marr claimed he and Wilkinson were the first people to report this during the Australian election campaign that there was a threat that the ship would be impounded. Rinnan was actually threatened twice on the first night because the

Tampa turned around not once but twice that night, then when the time came for him to sail into Australian territorial waters he was threatened again20

The people in charge of the Scandinavian shipping line that owned the Tampa did not to get into a panic about this because as Marr pointed out, at first the owners of the Wilhelmsen line thought:

Dark victory haspaid particular note to The Australian for its coverage of the issue at that time, claiming it was the best and surest paper on this matter, and it was The Australian that kept the issue alive. Further more Dark Victory has outlined the emasculated role the labour party occupied during the boat people issue throughout the Federal election. The book has explained the invention of the Pacific Solution and the decision to use the navy as a tool to push off asylum seekers onto other countries. Dark Victory hascondemned the federal opposition’s co-operation with the government.Dark Victory explains the workings of operation Relex run by Canberra bureaucrats to keep refugees from reaching Australia’s mainland. It tells how authorities in Relex under the Pacific Solution lobbied East Timor, Nauru, PNG and New Zealand to take refugees. Dark Victory has recounted how the government attacked the role of the judiciary by fighting two federal court cases and enacting retrospective legislation in order to make legal the containment and transfer of people on the troop ship the Manoora and Warramunga legal and keep the governments actions beyond the reach of the judiciary system22.

Dark Victory has explained that the government closed Australia to refugees and places the events of the Tampa in the context of the Australian Federal election, saying, that in order to win the election the government was willing to put lives at risk, draw in the military, muzzle the press, misuse the intelligence service, defy the United Nations, antagonize the Indonesians and the Scandinavians and bribe poverty stricken pacific states 24. Clearly Dark Victory has positioned the Australian government as ruthless in its pursuit of its election aims and gave full credit to the master of the Tampa for compassion in extenuating circumstances. Dark victory has touched upon the most profoundly important of human relationships: the relationship between the social subject and the structural institution. This was reinforced in David Marr’s words to Phillip Adams when he was asked if he could think of a more shameful period in modern Australian history:

I myself cant. I’m old enough to have only one minor point of comparison, and that’s because…

Marr’s words symbolize the nature of the relations between the social subject and the structural institution in contemporary Australia. Namely that on a recurring basis, successive governments have been willing to manipulate social structure in order to hold power. This instance therefore has the deepest significance for the social subject, whether that subject is an asylum seeker or an Australian citizen.

Fewer than seven days before the MV Tampa steamed over the horizon and into political controversy, the polls were telling Kim Beasley that the Liberal Party and John Howard were going to lose the election and lose heavily. The liberal party polling must have been indicating the same kind of result. Initial poling in the marginals had confirmed what Beasley believed, which was , that for the average voter, boat people and refugees were not as central as issues such as health, education and the goods and services tax (GST). According to Beasley there were no votes to be won by softening Labor’s stance on people who were trying to inter the country illegally. ‘ A sympathetic stance for people who come into the country illegally is non existent’. Beasley could see that there was a definite worry about border control, but to him it was mainly to do with drugs, quarantine, and illegal entry. According to David Marr and Marian Wilkinson

Labor had no excuses for getting it so wrong26.

Labor also miscalculated the ability of John Howard to make refugees an election issue. By August 2001 Howard had directed spending vast sums of money to the elderly, on voters in marginal seats, and on advertising his governments achievements. The ultimate effect of this was to shift John Howard’s government from a loosing position, to being back in the electoral race with a chance. John Howard who had been written off as a has been earlier in the year, was now fighting his way back. Howard’s approval rating showed the electorate was evenly split but that the government’s primary vote was slipping away to One Nation. In the marginal electorates poling showed that John Howard’s government had slipped away by nearly 8% , conceding ground to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation27.

Pauline Hanson had returned from the political graveyard to deliver a blow in Western Australia by winning nearly 10% of the vote in an election that ousted Richard Courts conservative government. A few days later in Queensland she delivered 20% of the vote across the seats her party contested and Labor had its best showing for 60 years. Hanson began the campaign by demanding that Australia take a hard line on turning boats away. We go out, we meet them, we fill them up with food, give them medical supplies and we say, “Go that way”

Hanson signalled in both campaigns that boat people were considered queue jumpers and not to be tolerated. Meanwhile the political fortunes of Howard were in the wind. Both major parties were loosing primary votes to One Nation.

The government’s best hope in securing victory in the election was to suck back the primary votes of One Nation. With out them Howard could well face the end of his political career. What issue could work the election miracle Howard needed28?

Richard Court and Ruddock had been encouraging a tougher stance on boat people in early 2001 but Howard had not taken up the issue as either a means of controlling immigration or winning the election at that stage. One reason for this is that as a politician in the 80s when multiculturalism was in high fashion under the Hawke Labor government, Howard voiced concerns about the level of Asian immigration. That blunder in 1988 cost him his job, a point he concedes. “I got chucked out of the leadership not long after that. I don’t know how far back that set me”29.

In 2001 however, Howard told Neil Mitchell of radio 3AW:

Despite Howard’s reluctance in early 2001, to take the immigration bull by the horns, there were other issues in the background that would drive Howard to use the Tampa as ‘the issue’ with which to win the election. Howard needed to drive a wedge between Labor and conservative policy, thereby defining himself clearly in the mind of the voter. He also needed to pour water on an issue that threatened to get out of control at a critical time. In parliament Simon Crean had accused Mr. Costello and Mr. Macfarland of misleading parliament. Crean had said, “They’ve been aware of a massive tax avoidance scheme by the Liberal party in Queensland at least, and they’ve covered it up. They should resign. Ordinarily the issue could be expected to dominate parliament, but on Sunday evening in the waters between Christmas Island and the Indonesian Island of Java, a drama was beginning to unfold that would save Ian Macfarland and Peter Costello, a drama that would be mercilessly exploited by a Prime Minister who realised his re-election depended on it, a drama that would resonate around the world and gravely damage Australia’s reputation as a nation that welcomed migrants and people fleeing tyrannical regimes32.

Over the same weekend that Macfarland, Costello and Howard were wondering about their future, Australia Search and Rescue were guiding the Tampa to the Palapa. The Tampa met the Palapa 75 nautical miles from Christmas Island and nearly 250 nautical miles from Merak, Indonesia’s port on Java. Later Howard and Ruddock would assert the refugees were found closer to Java than Christmas Island. Not so, for they were 30 hours from Merak and 9 from Christmas Island32a. The National Security Committee (NSC) Prime Minister John Howard, Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson, Defence Minister Peter Reith, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and Attorney General met while the Tampa was still sailing towards Christmas Island33.

On August 27, Moore-Wilton ordered the Department of Immigration and Multicultural affairs (DIMA) to tell Captain Rinnan that the Australian Government at the Highest levels formally request that the Tampa not approach Christmas Island. At noon the Prime Minister emerged to meet a press conference. He told them, the refugees would not reach Australian soil. He failed to say that this would trigger the Migration act, which meant that Australia would then have to determine the status of the people on board. According to the Prime Minister, they had to return to Indonesia. Indonesia’s view was that they were illegal in Indonesia too33a.

The arrival of the Tampa gave Howard the issue he needed. Suddenly Howard had an opportunity to show that he was in control. The camps were packed there was no more room for a further 400 people behind wire31. However, Rinnan decided with the backing of the shipping line and the Norwegian Government that the Tampa would be in breach of safety codes if he were to sail to Indonesia with the 433 Palapa Survivors on board. Further more, taking the survivors to Norway was out of the question. Norway backed Rinnan’s determination to sail to Christmas Island because it knew he had nowhere to take them.

As a result of the government’s decision to marry the issue of refugees with border protection, SAS troopers arrived on the Tuesday morning. Tuesday evening 9pm Rinnan issued a ‘pan pan’ distress call. It was ignored. Fifteen minutes after his ship entered Australian waters SAS troops were ordered to board the Tampa.

The Tampa provided Howard with what he needed most, the perfect opportunity to exhibit a clear policy difference between the Coalition and Labor on an issue that would bring back swinging voters. On Wednesday the Border Protection Bill was drawn up. Beasley refused to support it. Now the Prime Minister had his clear difference in policies and an issue with which to win back the voters who had swung over to one nation, take the heat out of the tax avoidance issue and finally pull him over the line in the November 10 Federal poll.

As a consequence of the ‘Tampa affair’, Australia shut its doors to about 2390 boat people in 2001. Australia forced 670 people back to Indonesia and spent an estimated $500 million dollars on operation Relex aimed at breaking people smuggling. Australian soldiers were ordered to do some of the worst work of their lives in the Indian Ocean. Of the people rescued by the Norwegian tanker the Tampa John Howard said ‘ we have always stood ready to take our fair share’. Australia took one. Australia prefers to settle its refugees offshore. In Borderline Peter Mares explains, that ‘Australia actually takes in far fewer refugees than Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Canada38.

Bibliograpy

Marr. David @ Wilkinson. Marion(ed) Dark Victory: Sydney: Allen@ Unwin: 2003-03

Megalogenis. George(ed) Beyond the White Picket Fence:The Weekend Australian: 2002

Solomon. David(ed) Howard’s Race: Sydney: HarperCollins: 2002

Adams. P: Interview with David Marr: Radio National freqency729: 4.10pm: 11.4.03

Footnotes