CANBERRA: A newly-released book that says Australian Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock asked in 2001 about stopping and sabotaging boats carrying asylum seekers to the country has rekindled a controversy about Australia’s policy toward such arrivals.

According to the book Dark Victory released on Monday by two leading investigative journalists, Ruddock asked officials at a meeting at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta in 2001 if boats carrying asylum seekers to Australia could be sabotaged.

At the meeting, Ruddock also asked why pirates did not attack boats carrying refugees who often carried jewellry and cash with them.

Ruddock’s meeting with the government’s ‘People Smuggling Group’ — comprising Australian immigration officials, police officers and foreign affairs officials — was recounted to investigative journalists Marian Wilkinson and David Marr, authors of the book.

When Ruddock persisted in asking about the possibility of pirates attacking the boats, he was cut off by Australian federal police officer Leigh Dixon, Marr and Wilkinson write in their book. Following this and other meetings, rumours of Ruddock’s extraordinary interest in preventing boats reaching Australia spread amongst embassy staff, the book relates.

According to Marr and Wilkinson, officials also referred to talk that Ruddock raised the issue of sabotage at a meeting. “Essentially the minister put it over jokingly, ‘well could we interfere with the boats?’ No minister I know, in a conference room with that particular group of people, puts anything like that with humour,” an official present at the meeting recounted to the authors.

According to the official, Dixon challenged Ruddock and flagged legal and ethical concerns about the suggestion. “Ruddock laughed it off, and said it was just a concept in the air,” the official told Marr and Wilkinson.

Initially, Ruddock told the authors he had “no formal recollection of any of those discussions which I am prepared to discuss.”

Contacted later with more details about what he allegedly said at meetings, Ruddock stood his ground. “Briefings that I receive as minister are confidential and involve quite frequently matters that should not be revealed by me for a whole range of reasons including public safety, international relations and national security,” Ruddock wrote in November 2002.

According to a spokesman for Ruddock, the people attending the meetings in Jakarta were not directly under his control, so he had no power to direct them to do anything. Ruddock, he insisted, would also not suggest activities that were against the law. Asked why Ruddock’s written response to Marr and Wilkinson did not dispute the allegation that the issue of sabotaging boats had been raised, the spokesman declined to comment further: “I’ve said what I’ve said.”

In mid-2001, Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s prospects of winning a third term in office appeared bleak. In August 2001 that all changed when Howard dispatched Special Air Services troops to prevent 430 asylum seekers — rescued from a sinking fishing boat by the Norwegian container ship MV Tampa — from landing on Christmas Island.

A standoff ensued for six days, during which Howard unsuccessfully attempted to direct the Tampa’s captain to take the asylum seekers back to Indonesia. Eventually Howard negotiated what he dubbed ‘the Pacific Solution’, involving the relocation of those aboard the Tampa to New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

While Howard’s policy drew widespread international condemnation, it ensured his re-election. Marr argues that Howard’s success in concealing what was really occurring was in part reflects a failure of the media.—Dawn/InterPress News Service