The Australian Maritime Search and Rescue Authority (AMSA) says the decision was based on the high probability that it was unlikely there would be any more survivors found.A baby boy died and eight people remain missing, while authorities rescued 88 people who have since been taken to Christmas Island.
Customs, the Navy, Air Force, chartered civil aircraft and a merchant ship all helped in the search.It has been revealed that the Australian Federal Police received the first distress call from a Melbourne man on Friday morning who had spoken to a person on the boat who said it was in trouble.A Customs vessel was directed to assist more than five hours later.
Former Australian ambassador Tony Kevin says lives are being put at risk because of an attitude among authorities that asylum seeker distress calls should not be trusted."There's an entrenched doctrine in the Australian border protection and maritime safety system that distress calls from asylum seekers are not to be believed, that they're having a lend of us," he said.
"And as long as these attitudes persist in the system, they will go on putting lives at risk, lives that needn't be put at risk because we have the resources to intercept and save and rescue them."
A spokesperson for AMSA rejected the comments, saying all calls for assistance are taken seriously."We have a team of dedicated search and rescue professionals working around the clock to receive calls, to assess the assistance required and then to organise the appropriate assistance as quickly as can practically be done," the spokesperson said."AMSA responds to every call to assistance from vessels seeking assistance adhering to convention requirements to respond without regard to the nationality or status of the people or the circumstances in which they are found.
"AMSA reiterates that entering the Indian Ocean in a grossly overloaded, unreliable wooden boat designed for sheltered waters, with no maritime communications, inadequate crew, no life rafts and no distress beacons presents exceptionally grave risks to the passengers, particularly children, and the crew.
"Each incident is managed in accordance with internationally accepted principals and taking [into] account the individual circumstances such as location of the vessel seeking assistance, sea and weather conditions, availability of nearby aircraft and vessels to assist."
Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare says there will be a standard internal review of the rescue operation.A total of 97 people from Iran, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka were on board the ill-fated boat, which officials believe came from Indonesia.Mr Clare says the Customs ship Triton arrived at the boat around 10pm (AEST) on Friday night.HMAS Albany and HMAS Bathurst were called for extra assistance. Bathurst arrived at 1:20am and Albany at 4am.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said he was saddened to hear of the child's death and that it underlined the importance for Australia to continue to work with Indonesia to address people smuggling.
'Sense of loss'Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison has told Sky News the Coalition is open to increasing border protection resources on the frontline to implement the policy of stopping asylum seeker boats.
"I don't think anyone should doubt anyone's sincerity about the sense of loss that we all feel when this happens, but this will keep happening unless it stops and it won't stop until it stops," he said.But senior Liberal party colleague and former naval officer Peter Debnam again questioned the Coalition's policy of sending boats back to the country they came from, saying it is difficult to carry out.
Speaking on Sky, he suggested the policy may not be easily achievable."When you've been on a patrol boat in the middle of the ocean and you're dealing with small boats, it's fraught for everyone ... it's a very dangerous situation," he said."And yes, you can try and turn them around and send them back to Indonesia but if they don't want to go it's going to be very difficult.
Most damaging for the Vatican is the role that its own bank, the IOR (Institute for Religious Works), may have played in these affairs. In the case of Mgr Scarano, investigators are in no doubt he used his two IOR accounts like overseas slush funds. Records show that on one occasion last year Mgr Scarano withdrew €560,000 from an IOR account in a single transaction. He is currently in the Regina Coeli prison, awaiting trial. On Friday the Vatican announced it had frozen his assets and warned that other people may be caught up in the investigation.
Aware of the IOR's scandal-struck reputation, Pope Francis hired a new president for the institution, Baron Ernst von Freyberg, in May. The German industrialist immediately made himself a hostage to fortune, however, by declaring that the IOR was a "well-managed and clean financial institution" whose reputation was paying the price for past scandals.
Last week finance police and magistrates, led by Giuseppe Pignatone, released a report on their 30-month investigation into the IOR. The document said that high demand for recycling cash, together with the lack of checks and controls by the IOR and the Italian financial institutions it had dealings with, made the Vatican's bank a money-laundering hot spot. The two men in charge of the IOR's daily operations, the bank director Paolo Cipriani and his deputy, Massimo Tulli, immediately quit after six years in their jobs.
Within hours Baron von Freyberg released a new statement: "It is clear today that we need new leadership to increase the pace of this transformation process." Pope Francis appeared to share this view, appointing a five-person commission to examine how the Vatican's finances are run. But those hoping for a truly independent assessment must have been disappointed by the line-up.
Instead of a breath of fresh air, there are only Vatican insiders. The most detached of the five appears to be Mary Glendon, 74, a former US ambassador to the Holy See who heads the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences. But like the other five commission members she has an IOR bank account.
Another commission member is Mgr Peter Wells, 50, a high-ranking figure in the church's governing body, the Curia, who, like Ms Glendon, has personal connections to fellow American Carl Anderson. Mr Anderson is a member of the IOR's board of directors and head of the wealthy Knights of Columbus, which has been described as the "Catholic masons".
Vatican-watchers say this doesn't mean that Pope Francis is averse to cleaning out the stables – or doing something even more radical. "I think Francis's natural inclination is to shut the damn thing down," said Robert Mickens, the veteran Vatican correspondent of The Tablet. But like other experts he believes Pope Francis will be feeling the full force of vested interests in the Holy City.
Some at the Vatican will be quick to remind Pope Francis that the IOR gives the Holy See tens of millions of euros a year that help it pay the electricity bills and overseas trips – and keep it in the black. The Italian press has speculated that the notion of closing the IOR may have produced the threat of fresh Vatileaks-style disclosures from those who want to maintain the status quo.
Click on their website http://www.winbogifts.com/products/keychains.html.