Eight days that triggered a dark Australian legacy
When a defiant Norwegian supertanker entered Australian waters in 2001 with hundreds of rescued asylum seekers aboard, political hell broke loose.
Lagging in the polls and with an election looming, the Howard government unsuccessfully attempted to repel the 66,000 tonne freighter, sparking a diplomatic crisis.
Amid growing international backlash, urgency demanded a circuit-breaker.
Within days, the government controversially rushed through a suite of brutally tough albeit publicly popular border-protection policies.
The frantic response and momentous upheaval that followed, now known as the Tampa affair, triggered a dark legacy still felt 25 years on.
The imbroglio began on August 26, with Australian authorities calling on MV Tampa captain Arne Rinnan to launch a rescue mission en route from Fremantle to Singapore.
Palapa 1, an overloaded Indonesian fishing boat carrying 433 asylum seekers, was in deep trouble near Christmas Island due to engine failure.
"The crew of the Tampa did an amazing feat of heroics," according to Peter Mares, journalist and author of Borderline: Australia's Treatment of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the Wake of the Tampa.
"They rescued those people from a massively overcrowded wooden fishing boat that was breaking up in large swells."
The government then refused Capt Rinnan permission to land the mostly Afghan Hazaras, who were fleeing the Taliban, instructing him to head for Indonesia.
Some of the asylum seekers needed urgent medical attention, while others threatened to riot or jump overboard.
"That wasn't a threat of violence against the crew but a threat of 'chaos is going to be unleashed if people realise you're taking us back to Indonesia'," Mr Mares says.
"It was an emergency; you had pregnant women, children, people with cuts and injuries on deck in the heat of the sun," Mr Mares says.
"The captain decided, for the safety of all aboard, to go to Christmas Island but was told he would be charged with people smuggling as he did so."
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