Letter to the Editor: PM told no children overboard 16aug04
THE controversy around the issues raised by 43 signatories of the recent open letter has at its centre the vital issue of truth in government. It is perhaps timely that I add to the public record on this matter.
The report of the Senate committee inquiring into a Certain Maritime Incident � the children overboard affair � found the inquiry had been "significantly hampered" by my "refusal" to testify before it.
The salient issue for the committee was "the extent of the Prime Minister's knowledge of the false nature of the report that children were thrown overboard" and therefore "the extent to which the Government as a whole wilfully misled the Australian people on the eve of a federal election".
The report noted the committee's "inability to question Mr Scrafton on the substance of his conversations with the Prime Minister therefore leaves that question unresolved".
The reasons for my non-appearance are mixed. Prominent among them was the failure of the committee to subpoena me to appear.
It was also significant that both the then secretary of defence (Allan Hawke) and the office of the former minister for defence, Peter Reith, advised me there had been a cabinet decision directing that I not appear.
Having resumed my position in Defence as a public servant following the election, these factors naturally weighed heavily in my decision. I have since retired from the commonwealth public service.
Also, I hold the conviction that public comments on controversial matters by senior public servants should only be made with reluctance and then only in exceptional circumstances.
However, a small footnote to the history of the "children overboard affair" may now be appropriate.
For the record, I was in Peter Reith's office as a seconded public servant on the same basis that I was attached to the previous defence minister's office (John Moore).
The conditions were that I had no involvement in electoral politics and dealt only with matters of Defence policy and public administration. During the election campaign, I remained in the Canberra office managing the ongoing business of the "caretaker period" while Reith and the political staffers, except for the chief of staff, relocated to Melbourne.
I did not see the minister in person during that period. Consequently, as the Senate report demonstrates, I was involved in many conversa tions with the minister, his press secretary, the chief of staff, the Prime Minister's Office, the Department of Defence and the Australian Defence Force from the first release of the photographs purporting to be of children in the water.
What would I have told the Senate committee? On the evening of November 7, 2001, after having viewed the tape from the HMAS Adelaide at Maritime HQ in Sydney, I spoke to the Prime Minister by mobile phone on three occasions.
In the course of those calls I recounted to him that: a) the tape was at best inconclusive as to whether there were any children in the water but certainly didn't support the proposition that the event had occurred; b) that the photographs that had been released in early October were definitely of the sinking of the refugee boat on October 8 and not of any children being thrown into the water; and c) that no one in Defence that I dealt with on the matter still believed any children were thrown overboard.
During the last conversation, the Prime Minister asked me how it was that he had a report from the Office of National Assessments confirming the children overboard incident.
I replied that I had gained the impression that the report had as its source the public statements of the then minister for immigration, Philip Ruddock.
When queried by the Prime Minister as to how this could be, I suggested that question was best directed to Kim Jones, then the director-general of the Office of National Assessments.
Mike Scrafton
Melbourne, Vic
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Revealed: the missing link in the children overboard affair By Patrick Walters, national security editor 16aug04
A CENTRAL figure in the children overboard affair has broken a three-year silence, directly contradicting John Howard's election eve statements of November 2001 that children had been thrown overboard from an asylum-seeker vessel the previous month.
Mike Scrafton, at the time senior adviser to then defence minister Peter Reith, in three telephone conversations with the Prime Minister on the evening of November 7, 2001, conveyed his view that the children overboard claim was inaccurate.
Mr Howard, in his remarks to the National Press Club the next day and in subsequent interviews until polling day, continued to claim children had been thrown overboard -- contrary to the advice provided by Mr Scrafton and air force chief Angus Houston to the Government up to November 7, the day The Australian first exposed the claims as wrong.
The affair was a decisive factor in the November 10 election, with the Howard Government using the incident to stoke public anger against asylum-seekers and divide Labor over border protection policy.
Mr Scrafton's exclusive letter to The Australian is the crucial missing link in establishing the extent to which the Howard Government misled the public about the children overboard affair in the 2001 election.
Mr Scrafton, a former senior defence department bureaucrat, was gagged by cabinet from giving evidence to the 2002 Senate committee set up to inquire into the children overboard affair.
"The question of the extent of the Prime Minister's knowledge of the false nature of the report that children were thrown overboard is a key issue in assessing the extent to which the Government as a whole wilfully misled the Australian people on the eve of a federal election," the Senate report found. "Its inability to question Mr Scrafton on the substance of his conversations with the Prime Minister therefore leaves that question unresolved in the committee's mind."
A spokesman for Mr Howard last night declined to comment until the Prime Minister had read the letter.
Mr Scrafton told The Australian the Government's response to last week's open letter by a group of retired senior military figures and diplomats had been the catalyst for him to break his silence.
"The issue is not about my career. It's not about my politics. It's simply that this is a point in which good governance is in question," he said.
"My impression of what happened was that ... the evidence they had before them was used in a way that was designed to mislead."
In a letter published in The Australian today, Mr Scrafton recounts that on the evening of November 7, 2001, he spoke three times by mobile phone to Mr Howard about the children overboard incident.
The conversations took place immediately after Mr Scrafton had been asked to view a videotape from HMAS Adelaide at the defence force's maritime headquarters in Sydney.
"During the last conversation, the Prime Minister asked me how it was that he had a report from the Office of National Assessments (ONA) confirming the children overboard incident.
"I replied that I had gained the impression that the report had as its source the public statements of the Minister for Immigration.
"When queried by him as to how this could be, I suggested that question was best directed to Kim Jones, then the director-general ONA.
"I understood it was a very complex issue for the Prime Minister.
"I was surprised, however, at the unqualified use of advice that he had received some weeks before," Mr Scrafton told The Australian yesterday.
On the following days, including his National Press Club address on November 8, Mr Howard repeatedly cited the ONA report, dated October 9, 2001, as evidence children had been thrown overboard from Siev4.
That intelligence report, which after the election was revealed to be based only on ministers' statements, said: "Asylum-seekers wearing life jackets jumped into the sea and children were thrown in with them."
Mr Howard said: "In my mind there is no uncertainty, because I don't disbelieve the advice I was given by Defence."
The morning before the election, in an interview with Glenn Milne from the the Seven Network's Sunrise program, Mr Howard again asserted he did not accept that no children were thrown overboard.
"The Government's position remains that we were advised by Defence that children were thrown overboard, we made those allegations on the basis of that advice, and until I get Defence advice to the contrary I will maintain that position," Mr Howard said.
"We were given Defence advice that children had been thrown overboard that was confirmed in writing by the Office of National Assessments." After an exhaustive inquiry into the children overboard affair, a Senate committee found conclusively that no children were thrown overboard from the vessel.
Mr Scrafton, who retired late last year, says a key concern is to enable judgments that the Senate select committee on the children overboard affair could not make at the time to be finalised.
He was gagged by a cabinet decision in 2002 from giving evidence to the committee.
"They said this (my testimony) was the key missing piece of evidence about whether the PM in that period failed to correct the record.
"What I want to do is complete the record."
The Senate majority report found Mr Reith had "deceived the Australian people" during the election campaign concerning the state of the evidence for the claim that children had been thrown overboard.
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PM calls 'key' in kids overboard case By Patrick Walters, National security editor 16aug04
MIKE Scrafton had just sat down to dinner at an Italian restaurant in Sydney's Leichhardt when the first call came through from Kirribilli House on the evening of November 7, 2001.
Scrafton, a quietly spoken senior Defence Department bureaucrat who had been seconded to then defence minister Peter Reith's office as senior adviser, knew the Government had a big problem.
That day the Government's hard-line defence on the children overboard claim began to fall apart. The Australian, in a front-page story, cast serious doubts on the claim.
Air Marshal Angus Houston, acting chief of the defence force, telephoned Reith around midday to tell him the bad news.
"There was nothing to suggest that women and children had been thrown into the water," he volunteered. (Scrafton had no knowledge of the Reith-Houston conversation at that time.)
Reith listened in stunned silence. He then told Houston that defence would have to think about releasing videotape from HMAS Adelaide of SIEV 4, the asylum-seeker vessel from which children were alleged to have been thrown into the water exactly a month before.
Scrafton, who had taken a day off to travel from Canberra to Sydney, received a phone call that afternoon from Reith asking him to go and have a look at the video. It was an issue, he said, on which the Prime Minister wanted some urgent advice.
En route to dinner, Scrafton detoured to defence's maritime headquarters in Potts Point to view the video.
"I rang Reith straight away and said to him that the best spin you could put on the tape was that it was inconclusive," he told The Australian yesterday.
"It certainly didn't support anything like children being thrown overboard. Nor, in my view, that threats had been made to throw children overboard. None of these claims were confirmed by the video.
"Reith said: 'The PM will probably want to hear this.' He rang me back about 20 minutes later and said: 'I have given your mobile number to the PM and he will give you a ring back at some point during the evening'."
Scrafton had harboured doubts about the veracity of the children overboard story for some weeks. In mid-October 2001 he had told his minister that photos released allegedly supporting the Government's claim that children had been thrown overboard from SIEV 4 did not support that contention. Reith was not convinced. The Defence Department, he told Scrafton, had a habit of "stuffing up". Reith continued to run with the claim.
"We knew there were doubts about it very early on," Scrafton now says.
"Did we actually know it didn't take place? Well, no, probably not until the end of October 2001 when people in HQ Australian theatre in Sydney were aware of what was on the video and aware of what was in the stat decs (taken from sailors on HMAS Adelaide)."
Scrafton says one of the great "mysteries" in the children overboard saga was why it took so long for the tape to get from HMAS Adelaide to maritime headquarters. "It was a pretty confusing period. My guess is that they had had the physical evidence in the headquarters for some time and did not know what to do with it."
Then came the PM's call.
"It was a bizarre process. I was upstairs in the restaurant when he rang me. He said: 'I believe you have seen the tape?'
"I said that in my view the tape did not show any children in the water. I said to him there was a man and child on the roof of the boat.
"There had been speculation about whether he was threatening to throw that child over. I said to him, in my view, he had the child on his hip, which was exactly the way I would hold my daughter if I was standing on top of a boat in the ocean.
"He rang me back around 20 minutes later saying, 'Well, what about the photos?'.
"We went through the whole story. I expressed to him that my understanding from all of the discussions in defence was that they had serious doubts about the photos. The photos were false and there were serious doubts about the incident.
"My view was that most people believed that the incident had not happened. (Ours) was a reasonably detailed discussion. As you know, he's pretty thorough and he grilled me on that.
"The third time he rang me back was on the issue of the ONA (Office of National Assessments, the agency that analyses intelligence for the PM) report.
"The PM asked how was it that he had an ONA report stating that children had indeed been thrown overboard.
"I guess he had not been getting good advice, from the nature of the discussion we had. I said my understanding was that the report simply reiterated what ministers had said and that it had not come from intelligence sources.
"I understood it was a very complex issue for the Prime Minister. I was surprised, however, at the unqualified use of advice that he had received some weeks before." Scrafton said his key concern now was to help finalise judgments that the senate committee on the children overboard affair could not make at the time. He was gagged by a cabinet decision in 2002 from giving evidence to the committee. "They said this (my testimony) was the key missing piece of evidence about whether the PM in that period failed to correct the record. What I want to do is complete the record."
Scrafton said the main catalyst for breaking his long silence was the hostile reception given by the Government to the open letter written by 43 former
senior servicemen and diplomats who last week called for truth in government and criticised Australia's participation in the Iraq war.
"The issue they raise is the issue of truth in government and the Government has been clever in deflecting the argument," he said.
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PM denies children overboard claim 16aug04
PRIME Minister John Howard today rejected a former ministerial adviser's claim that he was told before the 2001 federal election that no children had been thrown overboard from a boat carrying asylum seekers in Australian waters.
Mike Scrafton, an adviser to former Defence Minister Peter Reith, has written a letter to The Australian newspaper on the "children overboard" affair.
Mr Scrafton said in the letter he had had three telephone conversations with Mr Howard on November 7, 2001.
He said he told Mr Howard that a videotape of the incident did not support the proposition that children had been thrown overboard.
And he said he had advised the prime minister that no one in Defence that he had dealt with believed the allegation.
A spokesman for Mr Howard today rejected Mr Scrafton's central claims.
He said Mr Howard did speak to Mr Scrafton on the night in question, but the conversations were essentially about the contents of the video.
Mr Scrafton told the prime minister that in his view the video was inconclusive, the spokesman said.
He said Mr Howard did not agree with Mr Scrafton's comments on the dating of the photographs of the incident or the fact that that no one in Defence believed the children overboard claim was true.
He said Mr Scrafton made no subsequent reference to his concerns in other discussions with Defence officials.
The affair, which was the subject of a Senate inquiry in 2002, was a decisive factor in the November 10, 2001 federal election, with the Howard government using it feed public anger against asylum seekers and split Labor over border protection.
As late as the morning before the election, in an interview with Glenn Milne from the Channel 7's Sunrise program, Mr Howard asserted he did not accept that no children were thrown overboard from the Siev 4.
Mr Howard is expected to make a more detailed statement on the claims later today.
[End - The Australian, 16-Aug-04]
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