It has been three years since the Australian government began turning back asylum seeker vessels at sea, and in that three years it has done everything it can to keep those missions secret.



When the operations began in November 2013 under then immigration minister Scott Morrison, there was widespread criticism of the policy. Australia was criticised for potentially endangering asylum seekers, not providing an opportunity for their claims to be heard properly, and for the secrecy around it.

In a press conferences replete with Australian flags, Morrison proclaimed that there would no discussion of “on water matters”. On a weekly basis journalists would front up to these press conferences only to be met with an almost prayer-like chant: “I won’t comment on operational matters.”

But could the government legitimately claim these operations should be kept from the public?

In January 2014 I sought access under freedom of information laws to a series of documents about the turnbacks. When the government refused the request, I appealed the decision to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

The former information commissioner John McMillan ruled almost entirely in the government’s favour. He found only a small part of one document should be released.

It was a slim win for transparency, but a greater win for the government.

But surprisingly the government appealed almost immediately to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, where it has been heard over the last 18 months.

The government has argued these documents are a matter of national security, could damage international relations and affect future turnback operations. We argued that disclosing three-year-old ships’ logs and policy documents could not harm national security, and that questions remained about the lawfulness of the operations.

Given the government’s decision to appeal, you would assume the documents were incredibly significant. As it turned out, the government was not quite as bothered about them as it initially indicated.

After a few months of deliberating, the department decided to release parts of the very document the information commissioner had ruled should be disclosed. And not just that – even parts of the 14 documents McMillan ruled should be kept secret have now been released.

For the first time we can see Morrison’s initial order to commence turnbacks. We can see the government’s advice on how and when it should execute turnbacks, including how close Australian vessels should get to Indonesia. And the sketchy, handwritten details of the officers on board Australia’s vessels have been set out for the first time; their scrawls that say: “permission granted to launch”, referring to the orange lifeboats the government used to return asylum seekers to Indonesia.

These documents are critical to Australia. They are the official record of one of the most important and divisive issues of our time. And they should be public.

But following their release, AAT deputy president Dennis Cowdroy ruled in the government’s favour. He found that many of the remaining documents, if released, would jeopardise the security of the Commonwealth.

The documents, Cowdroy wrote, “could be used by people smugglers to subvert or otherwise render useless the methods adopted ... to prevent people smuggling operations and thereby render vulnerable the integrity of the Australian Borders against the influx of illegal entrants”.

He was persuaded that it would be contrary to the public interest to release the documents on the basis that they “comprise sensitive documents relating to maritime operations for the protection of Australia’s national borders, and thereby, the interests of the security of the Commonwealth, which is the public interest”.

This decision is likely to be invoked by the government in future cases where its opaque asylum seeker policies are at risk of public exposure. The court proceedings are likely to have cost the taxpayer well over $100,000.

But for all the government’s drum-beating about national security, it twice accidentally disclosed details it was trying to protect during the course of the proceedings.

The Australian government solicitor’s staff failed to properly redact several parts of the documents that set out how the turnbacks had occurred,, exposing some of the details the government was seeking to hide.

A subsequent order by the tribunal prohibited their publication.

Litigation is not the only measure the government has taken to keep these operations secret. Many of these documents relate to the period when Australian vessels entered Indonesian waters, breaching the government’s stated policy.

When I reported on the Ocean Protector’s role in these incursions in 2014, the now head of the immigration department, Michael Pezzullo, referred the story to the Australian federal police for investigation. This prompted a hunt for my sources by the AFP, in which my phone and email records were accessed without a warrant.

The story was also referred to the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity. The government tried to suggest public interest journalism was a corruption matter, within the commission’s powers to investigate. A file note released under FOI by the commission said the agency declined to investigate following the AFP’s investigation.

There is still a lot that the government is trying to keep secret about Australia’s actions on the high seas.