Talk:Tampa affair

Category: Migrant boat incidents

I added the Category: Migrant boat incidents because the articles I had drafted and had in mind involved strictly small boats but if any native speaker of English language feels that a Category: Migrant vessel incidents or a Category: (Maritime) Incidents involving ... (migrant boats or migrant vessels, this or that) fits better for a broader coverage to comprise this one and such articles as May 2007 Malta migrant boat disaster and December 2007 Seferihisar, Turkey migrant boat disaster, and why not, MS St. Louis and Voyage of the Damned, feel free to rename accordingly. Cretanforever (talk) 09:47, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Comments? Cretanforever (talk) 14:17, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Then I'll categorize my way then I'll direct the question to a specific man like User:Pmanderson. A subject matter relating to Australia will offer him a welcome change. Cretanforever (talk) 07:09, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Captain Rinnan

I found it bizarre that Captain Rinnan caved in to piracy (the refugees FORCED him to sail to Australia), then took the moral high ground to criticise the Australian government, and somehow (in what looks like a face-saving exercise by Norway) became celebrated as a hero, getting his country's highest award! What was the award for? He handled "a difficult situation" alright - by surrendering. He didn't do this on moral grounds. He did it because he was afraid. He moralised about it later. That gets him a medal. Very odd. 60.240.68.54 (talk) 23:59, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Did you intend for your post to have any specific benefit towards the improvement of the article? Or were you just offering an opinion? If it is the latter, then we should remove it. --Merbabu (talk) 00:09, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

This is a fairly odd comment, since Captain Rinnan himself chose to come to Australia, because it was the closest place to get assistance for the mariners he had rescued. This follows not only the laws of the sea but the standard procedure for rescue.--Senor Freebie (talk) 02:58, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Readers are warned most of the additions to this page are politically biased, obviously the work of socialists and one worlders. The same applies to the accompanying entry on the Tampa affair. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.149.83.90 (talk) 13:26, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Your 'warning,' of course, isn't rooted in anything resembling political bias. Not much! Have you ever read a history of socialism? Do you have the least clue what it is? Do you know that all modern democracies incorporate elements of socialism in their laws, politics, economic and social life? Are you aware of the extent to which you, personally, are indebted to such 'socialist' ideas as free public education, public libraries, universal suffrage, old age pensions, unemployment insurance, etc.? If societies hadn't evolved steadily leftward over the past several centuries we'd still be ruled by kings, queens and a landed aristocracy, and nobody would have bothered teaching you to read or write, never mind making it possible for you to access the internet where everyone is free to demonstrate an oblivious ignorance of history and of his or her own biases.

My warning elicits a longwinded explanation/rant applauding the virtues of socialism - fantastic and all the more reason to be wary of most of the comments on this page. You have just confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt most of the additions to this page are the work of socialists/one worlders. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.168.93.192 (talk) 10:02, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

The other two commentors may be "biased the other way", but I think their point is proved. The Captain was heading back to Indonesia, when he was "threatened" by the asylum seekers he'd picked up and essentially forced to head for Christmas Island. That is piracy surely! The Tampa was headed to Indonesia because the standard practice is to head to the nearest land capable of providing the required assistance. Christmas Island was not regarded as having sufficient facilities to cope - this was long before the present centre was built. To claim that the Captain decided without pressure from the survivors to head to Christmas Island is simply wrong. Being an act of "piracy" surely military deployment could be considered justified - nor is this to "cover up" the "children overboard" claims which were some time later. This issue is a polarising one, but more needs to be done in my view to try to keep a NPOV. The reasons for the "Pacific Solution" also could be spelled out. At the time what was happening was that many claiments were being rejected, and appealing, and if the appeal was unsuccessful, were appealling through the courts against the turned down appeal - all funded by refugee advocate groups and activist lawyers. It was this revolving door which lead to some claiments being still "unresolved" after periods of 3 years or more. The point about the "Pacific Solution" was really 2 fold. Firstly, the seekers would be judged under the UNHCR rules, which were much tighter than the Australian definition of a refugee. Secondly, by being "offshore" it was out of the jurisdiction of the Australian court system, which meant that revolving door legal cases couldn't be entered into. Part of the issue here is the time, and cost, of continual appeals through courts. Clearly asylum seekers would only go through this system if they'd first been rejected by the tribunal, and failed in the tribunal's own appeals system. The reasons for wanting "offshore processing" are quite obvious, even if you don't like or agree with the system.

SAS soldiers left the service

One of the elements that I noticed recently wasn't mentioned during a debate on this issue on the ABC's program Q and A was that numerous SAS soldiers who took part in the raid not only objected to their commanders but left the Australian Defence Force because they felt, perhaps rightly, that they were being used, not by the Australian government but by a political party. I have references and will post them once I find the book in question as well as edit the article. If anyone has any suggestions of where in the article it would be best to put this please put them forward. I was thinking that I should put them after Captain Rinnan's statement that the soldiers were not happy about their mission. Note that there are quotes from the soldiers from interviews by a former colleague who was writing about them.--Senor Freebie (talk) 02:58, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Below are the quotes of the SAS soldiers from the book Soldiers Without Borders by Ian McPhedran, himself a former SAS trooper. The publisher is Harper Collines Publishers and it was published first in 2008. Its ISBN is 978 0 7322 8555 5 I am going to work these quotes into the article in a way, so far as I can tell does not breach copyright. Some repeat the same information, others can be summarised. Note, that where names are not mentioned or alias's used this is because the book covers soldiers who have gone on to careers that may be sensitive and require anonymity.

Duncan Lewis, deputy secretary to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet

page 131

"the situation had changed in a moment and what we had was a sea of human misery on board the ship that needed looking after."

Rob Jamieson (alias),

page 306

"Like many of the men involved in the Tampa mission in ... Jamieson regards the use of the SAS as inappropriate." "The troops did more cooking and social work than soldiering" "I saw it as a gross misuse of the national counterterrorist asset, albeit for political reasons." "I thought the guy in charge, the skipper [Captain Arne Rinnan] was subject to some unfortunate actions from the Australian government. For a man who had just saved the lives of 400 people he was caught up in a situation that he really didn't need to be in. It was fairly transperant that the whole activity was an obvious political gesture." "When you see clear and obvious, if not deeption then certainly manipulation, then you tend to lose faith very quickly."

Several other SAS officers involved in Tampa have spoken privately about their disgust at being used as political soldiers. "The military is a politcal tool, but it is a national political tool not an individual's political tool," one ex-officer said. "When it becomes an individual's political tool, particularly a partison political tool, then you have got real problems."

Paul Papalia, Labor MP, Western Autralian Parliament

page 331

In October of that year, the Howard government used the military to cover up that fact that it had misled the Australian people about children being thrown into the sea by asylum seekers.

Pete Tinley, ALP candidate for Federal seat of Stirling

page 347  

Tinleys opinions would be better kept to himself. Obviously he is not fit to serve in any capacity in the Australian Armed Forces — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.149.83.90 (talk • contribs) 13:22, 12 January 2011

"Tinley and most other senior military officers were in furious agreement that the ship could have been stopped and boarded by the navy and that using the SAS was complete overkill." "We were invading the sovereign soil of the Norwegian country, a foreign country, on a flagged vessel of Norway.

Actually they were just boarding a ship that had been hijacked.

We were inhibiting the movement of an internationally protected person in the body of the ambassador of Norway who wanted to get on to that ship, which to my understanding was his universal right." The order had come from the very top of the Australian government, the prime minister himself. Tinley says the senior SAS men on the Tampa mission, the officers and the sergeants, knew they were engaged in a cynical political exercise. --Senor Freebie (talk) 04:57, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

And quotes from MPs from the opposing party aren't "political"? I would agree that the Navy should have been capable of stopping and boarding the Tampa, but not quite sure what point your making - are you suggesting it would have been fine in your opinion if armed seamen boarded the Tampa rather than Special Forces? They're all military, and the effect, for the ship and the people on board, would have been the same! What difference in terms of "invading the soverign territory of Norway" would that scenario make? The fact that this fellow wrote a book "Soldiers Without Borders" would indicate to me that he himself has some political agenda - the title is a contradiction in terms isn't it? BTW do you have any stats on the actual proportion of those who boarded the Tampa who left the military, and whether they really left because of the Tampa incident? As for Tinley, his quote was specifically about the "Children Overboard" claim, which was weeks after the Tampa incident, so it isn't really about the Tampa at all is it? I can understand the military not liking being at the centre of such a political storm, but part of being a proper liberal democracy is surely that the Government's decisions on the use of force can be objected to - does this mean that control of the military has to be subject to unanimous political support? You'd never have that. One Congresswoman even voted against War with Japan after Pearl Harbor. Personally I think the SAS weren't required, certainly not as the "first choice", in stopping the Tampa. But I doubt you'd be any happier if Navy did it instead.

Individual refugees - Weasel words / NPOV

This section appears to be weaselish (i.e. weasel worded)... Clean up time?

It gives a young boys account after a spelling bee, and then discounts his statements, next it presents the criminal activities of one of the former refugees.

No other individuals are mentioned. This doesn't give a neutral point of view and paints a negative picture that should not be presented as indicative.

Belfry (talk) 15:24, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Belfry (above) and add that selected events in the lives of individual refugees involved in the Tampa Affair have no place in an encyclopedia article. If someone had general statistics about the specific group of refugees versus the general population then that may be informative to the topic. I have deleted the section. 118.209.4.65 (talk) 06:10, 16 October 2011 (UTC) M.F. (Melbourne, Australia)

What does this mean? "The government introduced the so-called "Pacific Solution", whereby....". Was it called the Pacific Solution, or was it not?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.210.165.90 (talk) 22:23, 4 December 2012 (UTC) 

Dog whistling and wedge politics - would it be removed?

If I reliably source that critics refer to this affair as the start of Lynton Crosby's dog whistling and wedge politics from Lib govts, and that this impression has been reinforced by current Liberal govt actions, would anyone revert? Timeshift (talk) 20:02, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

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