You remember the “Certain Maritime Incident‘.
The one that was just another Howard vote winner on the election campaign trail.
The one where before we knew who’d survived and what happened, the then Opposition Leader, Kim Beazley, said it was the fault of government policy and John Howard portrayed himself as hurt and upset by the remark for days afterwards.
The one where a mother lost her three young daughters in the water and her husband, a refugee in Australia, wasn’t allowed to leave the country to comfort her.
The one where some passengers were forced aboard at gunpoint into a leaky, overcrowded boat and not allowed to disembark.
The one where an Indonesian fishing boat picked up 44 survivors after up to 21 hours in the water.
Yes, that one.
With the change in Government, it’s time we had an Inquiry into who is responsible for the deaths of 353 people. I know whom I hold personally responsible, the former Prime Minister who lost his own seat in the last election.
My personal beliefs aside, a tragedy on this scale and with so many unanswered questions merits an independent judicial inquiry, or a Royal Commission, to establish just what was the truth about the voyage and its outcome.
