Talk:MV Tampa

Small comment on my change to the article today.
A Norwegian book published in 2002 gives the captains view of what happened. It is clear that it was RCC Australia that picked up the distress call and asked ships in the region to respond. The MS Tampa and a japanese ship responded.

What happened on the bridge when the captain was threatened to go to Australia is a bit more unclear.

Gustavf Wed Jan 29 12:19:58 CET 2003

Move article from MS Tampa to MV Tampa
The name given most often for the Norwegian ship is MV Tampa.

Google has "about 878" hits for "MS Tampa". The first seven are mirrors of this page, and other ones are about beauty contests in Tampa, Florida. On the other hand it has "about 2,710" for "MV Tampa", falling to 1500 for "MV Tampa"+refugees.

MV Tampa redirects here, but it just looks wrong to me with MS Tampa at the top of the page.

Does anyone have any objections to me moving it? --xoddam 02:45, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

What about the habeas corpus litigation?
One aspect of this entry that is missing, and which was a very prominent aspect of the story in Australia at the time, is the fact that there was an attempt in the Federal Court of Australia to obtain orders to force the Commonwealth Government to produce the asylum seekers and justify their detention at law.

At first instance, Justice North ordered that the asylum seekers be produced before the Court. This order was overturned by the appeal court.

Ruddock v Vadarlis [2001] FCA 1329 (18 September 2001) http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/federal_ct/2001/1329.html

I can have a stab at this section if there's any interest, but I won't get to it for a while.

Small attempt at updating page
In order to show the present status of the detainees, I have added an external link.

I don't have the facilities to update the article in its entirety; perhaps someone nearer to the action can do that? Too Old 03:13, 2005 Jun 26 (UTC)

"Bitterly Divided"
Is this really the term we are looking for? I know it is trying to highlight the chasm between support and opposition to the government's actions, but using it here makes it sound like the community is polarised with roughly equal numbers supporting each view.

Perhaps something better would be to explain while the policy (apparently) recieved widespread support from the community, the government had been condemned by refugee groups etc.

The use of "Bitterly divided" paits a false impression of public opinion in this case. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.59.65.203 (talk • contribs)


 * No, I think it describes quite adequately the situation. Many people, myself included, were horrified with the way these people were treated. Don't try to rewrite history or justify your position by claiming everyone agreed with the actions of our government. Because we don't. I'd say that qualifies for being "bitterly divided". Imroy 18:56, 9 February 2006 (UTC)


 * No, the OP is correct. Imroy, you and others may have been different in your view, but it would be you that is being revisionist if you believe the public (at large) was "bitterly divided" over this issue, because it wasn't. Taking "bitterly divided" out didn't make it seem like "everyone supported one view" because that clearly isn't true - Leaving it in made it seem like the public was split in opinion. It would be like saying "Australians are bitterly divided between voting for major parties and minor parties". I mean it is patently obvious that some Greens or One Nation supporters are/were fairly passionate, but to say the electorate is divided over the minor/major party issue would be ludicrous, as it was to use the term in this situation. 70.189.213.149 11:18, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

It does not describe the situation adequately. Although not everyone agreed with Howard, he was given a mandate by being reelected. 'Bitterly divided' is an emotive term, unless you quote newspolls to represent this, or quote a higher authority making this claim I will ensure this term does not appear. Gullivers travels

Tampagate?
This became refered to as 'Tampagate' in the Australian media. I'm new at Wikipedia and can't be bothered finding out how to do this at this time but could someone make it so that a search for Tampagate will bring up this page?

Dark Side of the Spoon


 * I can do it, but am less certain if I should do it. The Australian media has a habit of appending "gate" as a suffix to anything controversial that relates to government. I'm not old enough to remember what happened at a certain hotel and office building on the other side of the world with a name like that, but it always seems irrelevent to Australia. The Tampa article does not currently contain the "word" Tampagate, so it seems to me to be inappropriate to add a redirect for it at this stage. --Scott Davis Talk 23:35, 13 November 2005 (UTC)


 * It appears that despite the contrary wishes of the general public across the planet, the Australian media does in fact continue to use “tampagate�? to refer to this issue. Rather than debate merit of the name, would it not make more sense to acknowledge the obvious and link “tampagate�? to this page? Cletus J. &quot;Bubba&quot; Huckabee Jr. 15:52, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Probably most of this article should be moved to a new name, "Tampagate" or "Tampa dispute/crisis/whatever", since it's almost entirely about the political dispute. In contrast to nearly all of our other ship articles, this doesn't include basic facts about the Tampa, like who built it, when it was launched, or even its physical dimensions. Stan 18:07, 20 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Please add relevent info on the ship if you know where to find it. Tampa crisis might be a suitable name if you wish to split the article. --Scott Davis Talk 10:04, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Just to weigh in here, but I have never heard the term "tampagate" in the media. And frankly, it sounds stupid. Google only turns up two pages of results for "tampagate", and only a few of them appear to be on-topic. The top result is this page! I see no reason to mention this silly name. Imroy 18:56, 9 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, no offence Imroy, but if you haven't heard this incident and its consequences refered to as Tampagate then you must have had your head under a rock! The google results don't really suprise me, as the phrase would very rarely have been used in print, but was commonly used on TV and radio and by members of the opposition. DarkSideOfTheSpoon 02:24, 25 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Just to clarify, I never said that I had never heard of the MV Tampa or the incident(s) just prior to the 2001 Federal elections. I do not have my head under a rock. I was just commenting that I'd never heard or read the term "tampagate" before, perhaps because I steer clear of the commercial news services. Pretty much ABC news (including Triple J) and SBS news for me. I could imagine channels 9 or 7 wanting to give it some simple label. See List of scandals with "-gate" suffix for more of thise silliness. Imroy 03:11, 25 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Fair enough. I also dislike the name and think it is derivative and stupid. Indeed it would have been the commercial channels that used this term, but that is no reason not to include it, if only for it to redirect to this page. I don't see what the big deal is. I would do it if I could be bothered finding out how lol. DarkSideOfTheSpoon 10:26, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

can some one add this in?
'The herd' wrote a song about this incident refering to John howard and the (song name) "77%" of Australians who support the governments moves. Im not sure if this would be considered advertising the band, but the band is on this site already and the song is relevent -thats why i even searched to this page. so put a link up if you agree.

the herd - 77% is the song name.

thanks anyways, ciao

Name change
I agree with Stan. Given that nearly all of the article relates to the incident in August 2001 and that the fate of the asylum seekers is discussed at length, along with the political ramifications, I think the article should be renamed to 'The Tampa Affair' or something of that ilk. 210.9.230.81 22:08, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Children Overboard
I find it odd that the Children Overboard affair has been relegated to nothing more than a "See Also", when in reality it played a huge part in the government's PR efforts to manifest support in the Australian (and indeed international) public with their efforts to refuse entry to the asylum seekers. Unless there's a good reason for this absence, I will add it in.Achromatic (talk) 08:31, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I think one part of your perception of oddness (and it might be shared by others) arises from the difference between what most of us generally associate with this ship's name (the refugee controversy and the 2001 election), and what the article is actually about - its subject is the ship the MV Tampa. There have been some other comments on this talk page about whether there should be an article about the "Tampa crisis" or somesuch, to separate these things out. Anyway, leaving that aside, I think we should not add significant material about the Children Overboard affair, because that affair related to SIEV-4 (primarily) and not to the vessel from which the Tampa rescued people. They are two separate incidents that have become one in many of our minds because of the broader politics of the issue (as you correctly identify). I think these are adequately dealt with in Children Overboard Affair, as well as (extremely briefly) in Australian federal election, 2001, and (also briefly) in John Howard. I think if one wants to expand on the topic, I would lean toward doing it in one of those locations. Cheers hamiltonstone (talk) 10:34, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Potholes
Who Potholed the entire Mythbusters section for no real reason? I have removed the large mass of links, keeping only relevent ones. 86.9.214.80 (talk) 19:44, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Tamper with Tampa?
THis article is largely about the "tampa affair" rather than the ship itself. Thus I suggest one of two things - either a rename of the article "Tampa Affair/Controversy" (or similar) and change wording as appropriate, or split the article into one on the "affair" and one on the "ship". The latter would depend on the notability of the ship had there not been the 2001 controversy. If we chose the latter, there would be of course some overlap in each to explain context. What say ye?--Merbabu (talk) 05:04, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree entirely. the article, as it stands isn't about the ship, MV Tampa.  It's about the Tampa Affair.  I actually looked up the article to get the dimensions of the ship, which aren't there! Wikipeterproject (talk) 21:06, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

OK, I think we should make the split now. No-one seems to be against it. Two questions: Thoughts? --Merbabu (talk) 04:57, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Let's do it - but first...
 * What should the new article be called? "The Tampa Affair"?
 * By what mechanism? I thought about creating a new page and pasting the vast majority of this article's text there, but then we lose the history and talk page discussions.
 * Given the apparent support throughout this page, and no stated opposition, I made the move. See Merbabu (talk) 05:00, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

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