Coroner must find what really happened in Christmas Island shipwreck THANKS to the efforts of The Australian - not the West Australian Coroner - there is now a real chance of finding out why 50 people died in the Christmas Island shipwreck. Without Saturday's disclosures by reporter Debbie Guest in this newspaper, the inquest into the shipwreck might never have bothered to take evidence from the survivors in person. That approach was an insult to those who lost their lives that awful night. It would have degraded the inquest by eliminating the prospect of survivors being cross-examined, a process designed to test the veracity of their stories. The coroner is now on notice that the truth about what happened might be even more painful than was thought. He must call the survivors. Without them, the inquest would be unable to properly test the question of whether guards at the Christmas Island detention centre were alerted, through a chain of messages, to the looming disaster hours before it happened. There is now a clear impression the Christmas Island shipwreck raises the same question that was faced in the aftermath of the Queensland floods. In Queensland, a call to a telephone emergency number was mishandled. On Christmas Island, it is beginning to look as though people died after a distraught father sought help, only to be fobbed off and sedated while his family drowned. If that is what happened, some overworked and relatively junior officials will almost certainly be blamed. But a much bigger question should be answered: who is responsible for this dysfunctional and deadly system of border protection?