Ex-defence bosses slam boat blackout Former defence bosses have joined a growing chorus of criticism against the federal government's plan not to reveal whether it's turning asylum seeker boats around, saying the public has a right to know. The government says it won't disclose whether boats have been turned back to Indonesia, a key plank of its border protection policy, and will give only weekly briefings on how many asylum seekers are arriving by sea. It has cited operational and tactical reasons for its stance. Under Labor, the customs department issued a media release when an asylum seeker boat was intercepted. The former chief of navy who turned back boats under the Howard government says the public deserves to be told what's going on. "The government said before it was elected it was going to do all these things," retired vice admiral David Shackleton told the ABC on Tuesday. A measure of their success is keeping the Australian public informed, to be able to give the public confidence that they're achieving what they said they were going to do. He thinks the reality of modern communications means the information will leak out anyway. Former defence department secretary Paul Barratt said there was no operational reason not to inform the public. "The public should know when people have arrived, how many people have arrived and should know when boats are being towed back," he told the ABC. Mr Barratt was sacked by the Howard government in 1999 and has been a strong critic of the coalition's asylum seeker policy in recent years. Acting opposition leader Chris Bowen agreed there were no operational reasons for keeping the information secret. "I think what's happening is the new government has worked out that turn-backs are going to be harder than they said they would be and they, therefore, won't be telling the Australian people when they're attempted," he told reporters in Gosford, NSW. Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young says her party will move in the Senate to try to force the government to reveal the information. But the government cannot be compelled to produce the information even if the Greens' motion is passed with Labor's support. Usually, ministers respond to such requests by either producing the documents or explaining why they can't be made public. David Manne, the human rights lawyer who successfully led the appeal against the former Labor government's Malaysia solution in 2011, reminded the new Abbott government of its "serious legal and moral" responsibilities toward asylum seekers. "We need to know their fate in a timely and transparent manner, not in a way which is seriously limited and possibly done under some culture of secrecy," he told Sky News. The fact is, this is fundamentally not a military issue. This is fundamentally about the predicament of people in peril, people fleeing persecution.