SIEV X is a story of the politics and power behind one of the most controversial episodes in contemporary Australian life; the Children Overboard Affair. It is 2001 and then Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, is facing defeat at the forthcoming elections. His policies are fractured by the arrival of the One Nation Party and Labor is on the ascendancy. Into this scenario arrives the Norwegian freighter the Tampa, bringing its most unwelcome cargo of desperate refugees into Australian waters and the hostile gaze of a suspicious electorate and almost equally desperate Liberal Party.  A new world of Australian politics has been entered, one that leads inexorably to the tragedy of SIEV X, and the drowning deaths of hundreds of refugees in Australian waters.