Former taskforce head denies knowledge of overboard video

The former head of the Prime Minister's People Smuggling Task Force says she knew nothing about a video said to depict children being thrown overboard, before a media interview given by the former defence minister, Peter Reith, last year.

Jane Halton has appeared before a Senate Committee investigating the events which came after false allegations that asylum seekers had thrown their children overboard.

She says correspondence she had with a key witness in the inquiry, Air Vice Marshall Alan Titheridge, suggested there was no such evidence.

Ms Halton says the first she had learnt of any video was from Mr Reith, after he had spoken to the media.

"There had never been any suggestion that I'd heard of that there was a video and as I said last time we have canvassed it here in detail this afternoon, I then made a series of phone calls to ascertain whether this was correct, the first of which was to Air Vice Marshall Titheridge, who said 'I know nothing about it'," she said

No safety concern

The Senate committee has heard Ms Halton did not consider there was reason for concern for the safety of those aboard a vessel that sank on its way to Australia last year.

Ms Halton says there was a large number of illegal vessels on there way to Australia when what became known as the Siev X sank, killing 353 people.

She says the task force was not aware of the precise details of the boats and was more concerned about where an estimated 1,200 asylum seekers would be housed once they arrived.

"The task force was very focused on the accomodation issues," she said.

Ms Halton says she was not informed of an Australian Federal Police report that a grossly overloaded boat was heading to Australia and the task force did not in turn consider it to be a safety of life at sea situation.

Changes

The Australian Defence Force is making big changes to deal with the command confusion shown by the Senate inquiry into the children overboard.

The chief of the Defence Force, General Peter Cosgrove, says the military is changing the way it does business to get better communication and coordination.

"We have got to do better with our email's," he said.

"We've got to somehow know where they are going and what accountability and reliability they have, got to do better with our photographic evidence and we've got protocols in place now to ensure we control and know about photographic evidence rather better.

"We've got to do better at managing the streams of communication that respond to incidents."

General Cosgrove says the confusion in children overboard affair happened in a highly-charged political atmosphere.