Still from documentary ‘Leaky Boat’

153 Tamil asylum seekers and an unknown number of Indonesians aboard two boats have lost civilian communication for over 24 hours and are believed to have been taken by Australian forces.

In a bizarre statement to press, Immigration Minister Scott Morrison refused to acknowledge or deny the boats’ capture or the existence of the refugees:

More here on the case of the missing asylum seekers.

Morrison is a fairly pernicious type, he’s seen as the man to crack down on asylum seekers – which are used as a kind of boogeyman for fair dinkum Aussies. Morrison is a keyfigure in Tony ‘Dickhead’ Abbot’s government, one that is drifting further to the right than ‘Honest John’ Howard’s mighty white government of the late 90’s & early 2000’s.

Read a further examination of the man that would make a Fine Gaeler blush (he wouldn’t) by the BBC’s Nick Bryant here. The documentary ‘Leaky Boat’ which examines the Howard Govt’s use of Refugee boats as a mechanism to boost their election chances in 2001/2 is available here.