War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russel

The news today:

"THE Indonesian navy has added three small warships to its southern patrols, with Jakarta declaring they are there to intercept people-smuggling boats, not to deter Australian incursions."

So the Indonesians have decided to co operate, so Bruce's predictions are 100% rubbish.

Shadow Minister

Indonesia already operates around 60 patrol boats (some donated by Australia) which often haven't been doing their job of intercepting people smuggler boats.

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_Indonesian_Navy_ships#Patrol_Craft.5B25.5D.5B26.5D

Instead its known that Indonesian patrol boats extort money from people smuggler boats in what is a type of protection racket, piracy or aiding and abetting.

Planta

Plant: Instead its known that Indonesian patrol boats extort money from people smuggler boats in what is a type of protection racket, piracy or aiding and abetting.

I remember some boat people complaining about this a few years ago. In fact the Vietnamese comedian (name slips me, Ahn Ho?) was talking about it to Tony Robinson last night. Not only off Java but Malaysia/Singapore & Thailand, Cambodia & Borneo. So the Aussie Navy will have to monitor the Indo Navy. Sigh... more spying.

Hi Jayb

Check out page 8 of this academic paper http://www.murdoch.edu.au/Research-capabilities/Asia-Research-Centre/_document/working-papers/wp141.pdf :

"...as a 2006 Human Rights Watch report states:

"The Indonesian military draws on off-budget (extra-budgetary and unaccountable) funds derived from military-owned enterprises, informal alliances with private entrepreneurs to whom the military often provides services, mafia-like criminal activity, and corruption."

Indeed, members of the Indonesian military/navy are believed to have been involved in criminal activities at sea such as pirate attacks. Military, navy and police officers are also known to accept bribes or ‘taxes’ from criminals, crime victims or businesses operating
within Indonesia and its waters."

Planta

LOL, all these emotional imbalance in the part of Australians is so silly. We Indonesians do not care whether these 'asylum seekers' exist or not. If you look into Indonesian press, there is around zero coverage over the "people-smuggling" issue. In fact, the average Indonesians would know nothing (nor would he/she be interested) on the "people smuggling" issue.

As such, we can infer two things from the Indonesians:
1) Indonesia does not care about asylum seeker issue, hence no-one in Indonesia is making "electioneering" over asylum-seeker issue which nobody in Indonesia is even aware of.
2) Given the recent incursions of Australian naval vessels, Indonesia rightly deploys some of its naval assets to ensure no further incursions by Australian navy.
3) Indonesians are fully aware that the only electioneering of the asylum seeker is obviously in Australia, where the Liberal Party is taking advantage of the racist xenophobic redneck mentality to win votes and whip the Oz population into a frenzy over supposed 'invasion of Muslims'.