Yes and why is Australia so obsessed with how people get here when it has zero to do with refugee claims?

Why do none of the media explore the international laws I have written about over and over again?
Did Sarah Ferguson and Tony Jones knowingly sponsor someone who knew people had drowned and did nothing to help?

Under what law do the AFP and other spies and spivs operate in Asia hunting and jailing refugees in the first place, it is refoulement.

And no more about regional forums and solutions please - that is simply code for us doing even less.

An excellent, thoughtful and well-written piece.

"Who watches the watchers? The AFP is not subject to the parliamentary oversight of defence and foreign affairs. It should be. There should be a permanent Senate Committee watching what the AFP does in our name. Lack of oversight can lead to corruption - moral, political and financial."

Exactly! Thank you for writing this. Unfortunately it is the fate of humans that reason usually takes a second place to personal political, social and economic gain.

If the Four Corners exposé showed anything, it was that at least when dealing with people smugglers, the AFP was a toothless tiger (or puppy-dog). Every time now they talk of AFP investigations I'm going to be seeing quick brown foxes jumping over sleepy police dogs.

But I can understand full well why the Four Corner exposé would raise the hackles of the "asylum seeker" activists. Because it has threatened their business model, exposing as a lie many of their best punch lines like this one:“Asylum seekers are thoroughly vetted and must prove their claims”

And the whole episode leaves a number of questions –none of which the present government is likely to be in a hurry to answer:
1) If it is the case that Captain Emad's asylum claims story wasn't halal, as it now seems, will the family members who accompanied him and relied on the same alibi be expelled?
“He had brought his daughter- in-law and her young child with him on the boat, so they were moved to the family compound to await interviews with the Department of Immigration”
2)When will we start seeing the other smugglers who accompanied or proceeded him being expelled?
“There is many, many smugglers or agents they enter Australia, and now they live in Australia”
3) If (sorry, that should be WHEN) he later re-enters OZ to avail of the “asylum” we have granted him, WILL HE STILL BE ENTITLED TO AN OZ PENSION?

And one last point. I have to give Mr Haigh full marks for this one:
“We know that not all people smugglers are bad”
How do we know this ?
Because: “ A book has been written about one. It has been released to great acclaim. More copies were sold at the recent Sydney Writers Festival than for any other book”
Um, yes, we have heard Mr Haigh talk about the Sydney Writer Festival before. I wonder if it was the same Sydney Writer audience, which:
“ gave [David Hicks] a standing ovation [and seemed] to think he was the Australian male version of Mother Teresa”
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/ovation-for-david-hicks-was-a-disgrace/story-e6frfhqf-1226062967732

The 4 corners programme showed what a joke the "thorough vetting
of asylum seekers" really is.

We Australians are a bunch of suckers and it seems that even the
AFP is fast asleep.

Its time to overhaul the Geneva Convention and close the loopholes,
as it is 60 years out of date.

The 4 Corners program was wrong at every level.

1. The Hazara man Sarah Ferguson accused of being an agent was set up, is suing the paper and was only helping his brother whom he had not spoken to for 6 years.
2. The man Abu Al Kuwaiti Ferguson claimed is an evil smuggler is none other than poor Abdul Kadem whose only crime in 1999 was to run out of money and translate for other refugees to get free transport for his kids. He spent years being jailed, tortured and illegally trafficked out of our country twice on false papers and was dumped in the streets of Baghdad where the whole family almost got blown off the face of the earth by the US and us.
Sarah Ferguaon and the ABC are well aware of this fact and changed his name in the hope we would not notice.
3. the AFP hired the two thugs Bruce is talking about.

I wonder if the trolls ever think or read anything other than a headline.

Because why do we blame the last person on the chain who has helped refugees and still trade with the very people who make them flee at the beginning of the journey?

Isn't that a bit like blaming an ambulance driver because he is always carting around sick people? Doésn't the logic that it is the last man in line is the person to blame the same principal? The ambulance driver is the last person before the hospital, ergo it is his fault the hospital is full of sick people.

the four corner's show just highlighted how idiotic this Government is when they are spending millions or billions on illegal immigrants while our old people can't find a bed in a nursing home. The current Government unable to be shamed despite encouraging hundreds to their death. A balanced media would of anilated the Howard Government had they been a quarter of incompetent.