Joint Defense Facility Nurrungar JDFN would have positively identified the attack realtime. The report found that ground operators at Nurrungar played a part in the tragedy, which the Air Force described as a "worst case combination of events"; these were in turn compounded by failures in the MIM-104 Patriot intercept system deployed near the Dhahran base itself. After September 1999 its operations were moved to the Joint Defense Facility Pine Gap, near Alice Springs, and ownership of the premises was transferred to the Woomera Test Range (headquartered in Adelaide). The ADF now uses the site occasionally for army test and evaluation work under the
Asylum in Australia carrying Chinese and Sino-Vietnamese refugees were returned to their place of origin after asylum claims were denied. The rapid repatriations meant that many citizens were unaware of the refugees. During this period a refugee from Indonesia was detained for 707 days before being granted refugee status. In 1999, Middle Eastern immigrants fleeing from oppressive regimes in Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq began to arrive in large numbers. The government of John Howard extended the time they spent in mandatory detention and introduced temporary protection visas for boat arrivals. The deterrents did little to stop immigrants; roughly 12,000 asylum seekers reached Australia