No, minister

NOW for a dispatch from our That Was Then, This Is Now department. When he was but an opposition senator, Defence Minister John Faulkner doggedly pursued the Howard government over the 2001 sinking of the SIEV X, in which 353 asylum-seekers died. He demanded a judicial inquiry and vowed to never stop asking questions. But Freedom of Information searches reveal since he became minister, Faulkner hasn't asked a question of Defence. This may be a good thing; when a judicial inquiry was requested in 2008, Defence suggested they'd been put under enough scrutiny in the Senate inquiry Faulkner was a part of, even if "the loss of SIEV X . . . continues to generate speculation regarding the role of Defence and other agencies in the subsequent search and rescue for survivors". Faulkner and Attorney-General Robert McClelland say a judicial inquiry . . . brace yourselves . . . is not on the agenda.