Monday, February 27, 2012

The World According to David Marr

IN THE 14 months since SIEV 221 came to grief off Christmas Island and 50 lives were lost, Silly star David Marr has churned out quite a bit of that quality journalism. The flow began well before the last body had been hauled from the water, when Marr went to press with his considered opinion that the Royal Australian Navy needed to be held accountable.  He took up the same theme at much greater length on the tragedy’s anniversary, once again blaming the navy for failing to detect the boat and, when its presence was known, for being culpably slow to mount a rescue. And on Friday, Marr was at it again, this time adding Western Australia Coroner Alistair Hope to his list of villains. Hope’s offence is to have produced a lengthy report which dares to disagree with Marr’s view of events.

We will get to Hope’s inquiry in a minute, but before then it needs to be noted that Marr’s boss, the quality CEO Greg Hywood, has lately been making all sorts of sanguine noises about his company’s transition to the Digital Age. Yet somehow, Cyber Dude Hywood’s Silly and Phage have each neglected to provide a link to Hope’s report, which is readily available via the web.  Read it and the one question yet to be answered concerns not the navy but Marr: is he the most incompetent journalist in Australia or the most dishonest?

Below are some of Marr’s more florid assertions, followed by what Hope has to say about them. Incompetent or dishonest, you decide:

EXHIBIT A

MARR 2010: The key mystery of this tragedy is how that boat was allowed near those cliffs in that filthy weather. 

MARR 2012: [Hope] gives a lot of attention to the lack of radar, or indeed any, surveillance on the morning of the wreck; but the navy command comes out of clean.
True, Hope deals at length with surveillance, but he also explains why it is not to be regarded as a Navy failure:
HOPE 2012: The Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN) was not turned on at the time when SIEV 221 was wrecked and was never designed as a surveillance tool for detecting small wooden boats such as SIEV 221. At the time of the incident Border Protection Command had commenced a process to trial a land based radar system but that system was not operational. It is doubtful whether that type of radar system would have been capable of detecting SIEV 221 on the morning of 15 December 2010.
In his further comments, Hope notes the Navy ship, HMAS Pirie, and its companion Customs vessel, the Triton, were correct to have sheltered on the island’s lee, where they escaped the storm which drove SIEV 221 onto the rocks. From there, because a mountain was in the way, each was unable to scan the northern horizon, whence the doomed boat came.

Further, Hope observes that the area within 12 miles of Christmas Island is the responsibility not of the navy but of the Australian Federal Police, further noting that its patrol vessels were unfit to put to sea under such conditions. There would appear to be a story in this, as Hope reports AFP was forced to accept unreliable and unstable twin-hull vessels it did not want and whose adoption the Volunteer Marine Rescue Service also opposed. The Leisurecat craft were forced upon both services regardless and, as Hope remarks in passing, as a consequence of some curious business in regard to the awarding of contracts.

A quality journalist might catch the sniff of a story in that decision to equip rescuers with boats they could not use, but not Marr. So determined is he to blame the Navy and advance his initial judgment of its culpability, Hope’s points about those Leisurecats do not rate. Nor does he dwell on the fact that all those vessels were out of service due to safety and mechanical deficiencies when SIEV 221 hove into sight.

Finally, as Hope also points out, the navy had issued repeated reminders that its brief is coastal protection, not rescue. Its ships would be more than willing to take part in such operations, the brass advised, but they could not be counted upon as their prime duties might render them unavailable.

Indeed, when SIEV 221 went aground, the Pirie had its hands full tending to another people-smuggler boat, SIEV 220, which arrived at Christmas Island the day before. 

EXHIBIT B

MARR 2010: Christmas Island is a gloomy mountain sticking out of heavily patrolled seas. Navy and Customs are everywhere. For a boat to reach the cove undetected is extremely rare. 
HOPE 2012:  …another vessel SIEV 220 had arrived on the morning of 14 December and had first been detected by persons onshore in the area of the Settlement when it was only 300 yards north of Flying Fish Cove … over the preceding six months there had been an increasing number of SIEVs arriving at Christmas Island.
Actually, undetected arrivals at Christmas Island are not all that rare. Most vessels are spotted relatively close to the island, and seven have dropped anchor without being spotted at all.

Indeed, as Hope also explains, finding and intercepting SIEVs off Christmas Island is not a priority for the entirely logical reason that refugee boats are already intent of going there, where they know safety awaits. The navy’s primary and more problematic chore is to intercept vessels which do not want to be found.    

EXHIBIT C

MARR 2012: [Christmas Island residents] had realised at once that a refugee boat steaming out of the murk at 5.30am was in danger. 

No they didn’t. When first spotted, SIEV 221 was to the north of the island, its engine was working and its crew had the choice of heading to the storm-lashed western shore or the pacific eastern one, where a safe landing site was available at Ethel Beach. The first person to spot the boat was so unconcerned she did not bother to immediately contact authorities. Marr, who has made much of the precious minutes allegedly wasted by a “tardy” Pirie, also gets the time wrong: 
HOPE 2012: [Island resident] Mr Martin contacted the customs on call officer, Les Jardine, by telephone at 5.46am and advised him of the situation.
The boat’s true peril became apparent to those onshore only after it executed that ill-advised turn to the west. That was around 6:00am, when a deluge of calls began to flood emergency operators and Christmas Island officials.  As Hope puts it on page 34 of his findings, “the disastrous decision to turn to the west, presumably made by the crew, took place at about 5:55am and the boat then travelled to Rocky Point”, where it was wrecked. 
HOPE 2012: Residents on Christmas Island made emergency calls at 5:57:57am, 5:58:56am, 5:59:34am, 6:00:06am, 6:07:04am and 6:09:04am. These calls went through to the AFP On-call officer on the Island who advised the officer in charge, Sergeant Peter Swann, of the calls at about 6:07am.

EXHIBIT D

Having mangled the timeline, an error that just coincidentally aids his prosecutor’s case for navy negligence, the Silly’s coverage continues thus:

MARR 2012:[Residents] made the right calls to the right people. They assumed the Pirie, sheltering in the lee of the island about half an hour away, would soon be on the scene. How wrong they were.”

What Marr also neglects to mention is that the Pirie was underway and making all haste for the island’s western side by 6:21am (page 63), just 11 minutes after Lieutenant Commander Mitchell Livingstone roused his crew and ordered the ship readied for rescue operations. 

By 6:32am, the Pirie was making 24 knots when Livingstone received a more comprehensive briefing of  SIEV 221’s engine failure and imminent danger. Such was its peril, Livingstone was advised to redeploy the second of his two rubber boats from attending to SIEV 220, which was allowed to drift unsupervised.
HOPE 2012: This appears to have been the first occasion on which those on the HMAS Pirie or ACV Triton were alerted to the concern that the SIEV might be in serious danger.
Remember, Marr asserts SIEV 221’s danger was apparent at 5:30am, suggesting the navy should have known about it and taken immediate action. Yet Hope states Livingstone only became fully aware of the situation’s gravity almost a full hour later.

Marr’s reaction is to sniff “Amazing!” – which it would be if Hope had not laid out an accurate timeline of the morning’s events, the timeline Marr pointedly declines to acknowledge.

Livingstone dropped a U-turn and retrieved his rubber boat, then resumed his original course – only to see his progress further slowed when one of his two engines went on the fritz. Marr, who declines to dwell on the dud Leisurecats, makes much of this mechanical failure.

EXHIBIT E

MARR 2011: At 6.32am the Pirie set out at full speed for the other side of the island. Two minutes later her port engine automatically shut down. The cause of the failure - a small chunk of metal drawn into the turbo impeller - would not be discovered until the ship returned to Darwin. The Pirie was left limping through the swell at 16 knots.

Limping? Well, that is a matter of definition.
HOPE 2012: At about 6.35am HMAS Pirie suffered an emergency stop on her port main engine which initially limited speed to approximately 11 knots as the standing operating procedure, which was implemented, was to immediately bring the other main engine back in order to avoid damaging both engines.
Livingstone scrapped ship's operating protocol and thrashed the one remaining engine for all it was worth to achieve the16-knot speed which Marr regards as such a dawdle. In addition, he unloaded his rubber boats and sent them speeding by the shortest possible course to the crash site while he directed the Pirie via a longer route around an uncharted section of coast off the island’s northern edge.

EXHIBIT F

While Marr makes highly selective use of Hope’s findings and narrative, there are some elements which do not rate a mention at all. One wonders if Marr’s eagerness to plead the boat people’s case might not have had something to do with these omissions from his late report:
HOPE 21012: the boat had no radio
·       there were not enough life jackets
·       the boat was overloaded
·       the captain left halfway through the voyage
·       the bilge pump was faulty
·       people were instructed to throw their mobile phones away
·       the engine had problems before the journey
·       the fuel was not secured
·       the survivors observed no emergency safety equipment, such as a maritime radio or EPIRB, and
·       the GPS was thrown overboard, thereby abandoning a navigational tool that could have ensured safe passage to the lee of the island
Marr began his latest assault with this statement “The navy gets off lightly.” Accurate reporting, however, takes quite a beating.

27 comments:

  1. I have a fungus growing between my toes, I have given it a name..... David Marr

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you Prof. As has become apparent in numerous fields of inquiry (climate, IR, enviro-contamination, medical "disasters", income inequality, gender discrimination etc etc) what passes as the conventional wisdom of the scribbling class needs point-by-point refutation.
    Thankfully the blogosphere is providing a forum for more humble, detail-oriented investigation. It might not make a big splash, but it grinds hard and slow.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Excellent article in exposing one of the looney lefts quality journalists!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Marr is a serial liar.

    "Examples of these appalling policies have been extracted from DARK VICTORY by David Marr and Marian Wilkinson, and are given under four headings below:
    (Im only showing an outright lie)

    "e. direction to soldiers to use electric batons to force compliance with the order for the boats to be turned back"

    Electronic batons have never been used, and as far as Im aware never been issued as equipment in any detention or interception environment.
    Leaving aside that, just how effective or safe to the operators would an electronic device like that be in a wet, maritime environment.

    We were accused of using electronic batons at Port Hedland as well, pure bullshit, but ask a refugee booster and they will take is as common knowledge.
    Nearest we had were the metal detecting wands, powered by 2 "aa" batteries.

    Hes a zeallot for "his" cause, truth be buggered.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Marr is a real piece of work, and a smug arrogant ugly one to boot!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Recall Alan Jones having to answer over alleged inaccuracies reported to the media authority. All it takes is a member of the public to raise a complaint.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Bunyip - why not submit your fact search to the "new" Fairfax editor? They might be so glad to have an alternative to the poisonous Marr. "Poisonous" - I cleaned that up for publication!

    OK OK I was dreaming, but Gina time to pull the finger out old girl - time is short.

    -Carl

    ReplyDelete
  8. I look forward to Jonathon Holmes sneering about Marr's journalistic skills tonight on Media Watch.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.February 27, 2012 at 3:52 PM

    Bunyip, you have admirably shown, indeed confirmed, how David Marr writes with considerable prejudice, a predilection which famed wit Ambrose Bierce long ago defined as producing 'a vagrant opinion without visible means of support'. Marr to a T if you ask me.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I wish I could be half so fierce
      As the redoubtable Ambrose Bierce.
      Should David hide behind a paper,
      Bierce would decry that paltry caper.
      Rewriting history’s so much fun
      ‘Til Bunyip scans and drops a ton.
      Peine forte et dure, though from afar
      Can crimp the modus of a Marr.

      Delete
  10. Marr is so narcissistic that, when someone recoils from his arrogance, he thinks he's making a pass. Apart from that, he's not a good reporter's bumhole - a prototypical employee of the low-rent disinformation rag the SMH has become.

    ReplyDelete
  11. This deserves a front page.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Cannot believe that anyone could read that bit about the Leisurecraft contracts and not think...hmmm, I’d like to know more about that.

    Oh, it’s Marr. Well, that explains it.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Marr: is he the most incompetent journalist in Australia or the most dishonest?

    Is there really an answer to this, or is it a trick question?

    I'm going with (c): both of the above.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Hanyu: He is a one-man conga-line of suckhole(s).

    Interesting to note that bit about the ditching of the GPS and the mobile phones. In other words, in order to present the most politically ideal face to get through the gates, they threw away the tools of their survival.

    In a sick, roundabout way, what happened to them almost serves them right. Pity about the young'uns on board, who had no say in all of this and were caught up in the adults' follies.

    ReplyDelete
  15. That Marr is scum is not in question. It is those who keep his company that should be embarrassed by this pathetic hater.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Marr is a filthy piece of work... eh always has been.

    ReplyDelete
  17. The Navy personnel on those ships could consider a class action for defamation arising from Marr's misinformation and distortions.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Is it possible that the Dancing Queen once got a knock-back from a sailor and still hasn't got over it?

    ReplyDelete
  19. Thanks so much for this well documented expose, Professor. It was these kinds of Australia-hating lies that prompted me to cancel our SMH subscription.

    ReplyDelete
  20. I don't understand this at all. Marr is very keen that journalists get the facts straight...

    http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/in-black-and-white-andrew-bolt-trifled-with-the-facts-20110928-1kxba.html

    ReplyDelete
  21. Why have a go at a Liar.
    His Boss is responsible!
    They are the ones behind the rot.
    David Marr could not give a .......

    ReplyDelete