Even after the Minister for Home Affairs Jason Clare's well-crafted media conference on Sunday morning, many important questions remain about the latest asylum-seeker boat sinking tragedy.
A reported capsized hull was found semi-submerged 65 nautical miles northwest of Christmas Island at 070519 UTC (i.e. 3.19pm AEST on Friday 7 June). This find triggered a Mayday (top-level distress) message to all shipping from AMSA Rescue Coordination Centre 11 and a half hours later. Independent SIEV X researcher Marg Hutton found and published this Mayday message early on Saturday.
Clare announced the finding thus: 'About 3pm AEST, on Friday, the P3 [RAAF long-range surveillance aircraft] sighted a submerged hull in the water 65 NM NW of Christmas Island.' Clare said the capsized hull was not seen again, but that some debris was later sighted from the air at around 5pm.
Later, 13 dead bodies were sighted from the air — they had not been recovered as the focus was still on searching for survivors from the boat, estimated to be carrying 55 to 60 asylum-seekers, including women and children.
The Mayday message reported the position at which debris (or the capsized semi-submerged hull — the Mayday seems to have conflated these two sightings, about two hours apart) as 09-57 S 104-34 E (9 degrees 57 minutes south, 104 degrees 34 minutes east). This is actually east-north-east of Christmas Island, several nautical miles south of the boundary between the Indonesian and Australian maritime Search and Rescue (SAR) regions.
This fact makes the search and rescue response to this incident fully an Australian responsibility. Both Clare and Admiral David Johnston, Commander of Border Protection Command (BPC) made clear at the press conference that BASARNAS (the Indonesian search and rescue authority) is not involved in this search and rescue operation.
Clare volunteered at the conference that there had been a previous Australian sighting of this vessel at a position 27 NM north-west of Christmas Island, on Wednesday 5 June. This position is just 3 NM outside the contiguous zone in which BPC normally intercepts incoming asylum-seeker boats.
He said the boat was reported 'stationary but did not appear in distress'. He said the people on board had waved but made no distress signal. He said subsequent searches of the same area on Thursday by HMAS Warramunga