UPDATE

Another boat has sunk, north of Christmas Island. Reader J reports some 100 people are believed to be involved and there are bodies in the water. The Home Affairs Minister, Jason Clare, will give a press conference soon.

UPDATE

Clare says 88 rescued, one baby dead, eight missing. Man in Melbourne alerted them to vessel sinking, and gave them coordinates - 108 nautical miles north of Christmas Island.

The Prime Minister's new parliamentary secretary, Ed Husic, has been subjected to a torrent of abuse online for being sworn in to his position with a Koran.
Mr Husic became Australia's first Muslim frontbencher on Monday when he was appointed to Kevin Rudd's new-look ministry as parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister and parliamentary secretary for broadband.
"This is a wonderful day for multiculturalism, and everything it stands for in our country,"

However, after receiving dozens of messages of congratulations on his Facebook page, the comments quickly turned to disgust and outrage that he had chosen to be sworn in on the Muslim holy book.

MUSLIM activists will launch the first TV commercial in Australia about the Prophet Mohammed in a bid to improve the religion's battered image.

The Islamic community has raised a war chest of "tens of thousands" of dollars to fund a series of 30-second commercials, due to air on the main television networks from July 9.

They are the brainchild of the Mypeace organisation, based at Bankstown, which is attempting to build bridges between the Muslim community and other Australians.

The prime-time ads, set to appear on Channels 7, 9, and 10, and SBS over several months, feature major figures of history including Mahatma Gandhi and George Bernard Shaw extolling the virtues of the Prophet Mohammed.

Mypeace founder Diaa Mohamed yesterday said negotiations with the TV networks were being finalised for the commercials to run in breakfast, afternoon and evening timeslots.

"This is a response to misinformation - not many (Australians) are aware of who the Prophet is and why we regard him so highly and so emotionally," Mr Mohamed said.
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The claims come from a former senior Immigration Department official who says the system favours those who tell lies over those who tell the truth, is easily scammed and has become utterly dysfunctional.

“Having considerable experience interviewing and assessing boat arrival claims, I can confidently say ... that we are approving large numbers of people who are fabricating claims,” he wrote in an unpublished account of the process, obtained by The Weekend Australian…

The Weekend Australian also interviewed a former member of the Refugee Review Tribunal, who ... said that asylum-seekers on Christmas Island told him they had simply copied their claims from other applicants who had been successful.
The former tribunal member said that transcripts of court cases in which asylum-seeker appeals had been upheld circulated widely on Christmas Island so that claimants, and their advocates, could see what testimony had been successful.

“I would sometimes receive a completely compelling story that was impossible to refuse,” the former tribunal member said. “The problem is I would receive 100 other identical stories with only the names changed."…

He also reported that middle-class Iranian asylum-seekers often arrived in Christmas Island barely a week after leaving Tehran and exhibited an aggressive “entitlement mentality”.

Iranian Mohammad Abdi, who was granted residency in February 2011 with his wife and first son, was arrested last month, provisionally charged, and is in custody while the police investigation continues.

Their two-year-old second son was born in Australia, after the family returned to Australia as UN-certified refugees, and is an Australian citizen, according to his mother. The couple had first arrived by boat in 2009, but feeling homesick, they returned home only to be persecuted after converting to Christianity.

The immigration minister has the discretion to revoke the boy's citizenship and order deportation under Section 34 of the Australian Citizenship Act, in the public interest.

"It's extraordinary that a child born to asylum-seekers has no right of citizenship but that's what the law says," said Asylum Seeker Resource Centre chief executive Kon Karapanagiotidis.

The department confirmed Mr Abdi's visa had been cancelled, along with those of his wife, who claims they are separated, and the children. As people now unlawfully in Australia, the wife and sons were liable to detention and removal from the country, a spokesperson said.

The family's visa cancellations were "consequential" on the department's determination that 36-year-old Mr Abdi's return to Australia would be "a risk to the health safety or good order of the Australian community".