Refugees between pasts and politics: sovereignty and memory in the Tampa crisis
On the morning of 25 August 2001, few Australians had heard of the merchant vessel Tampa. The Norwegian ship had left the port of Fremantle three days earlier and was on its way to Singapore. The next day, the Tampa rescued 439 people from a sinking boat, prompting a major shift in Australian refugee policies, sparking a major political controversy and turning around the ailing fortunes of the governing Liberal National Coalition ahead of a federal election later that year. On the morning of 25 August, Melbourne's Age carried an article on its opinion page that would become far more relevant than its author, Hugh Mackay, could ever have anticipated. He warned: