As someone who also went to Cambridge, unfortunately not funded by the Australian taxpayer, may I reiterate the following comments I made in my article “Bemused among the basket weavers”:
• Australia accepts over 200,000 immigrants a year and government believes a 1% population increase by immigration will be assimilated and tolerated by the Australian population. (We are probably at the limit - Research published by The Daily Telegraph in 2012 shows that 51 per cent of respondents in favour of saying no to all migrants - a 10 per cent jump since 2005.)
• Over 5 million people are seeking to migrate to Australia.
• The average profit to a people smuggler of a boat was over $1 million and there was no after-sales service.
• The best point I have heard about the debate was by a Pakistani taxi driver who legally immigrated to Australia in 2007. He argued the boat people must not be allowed in because if they are successful they will begin their life here by breaking the rules. To him the great strengths of Australia were the rule of Law and that the low amount of government corruption compared to other countries. You will destroy this zeitgeist if you allow in people who begin their new life breaking the rules
As an immigrant myself I want every migrant checked out before they arrive in this country. I do not want people jumping the queue because they can buy their way in. I cannot see the problem if the Australian government pays boat crew members to turn the boat around. This is hearsay, but I have heard that each illegal immigrant costs the Australian Government $70,000 to process besides taking the spot of someone who chooses to migrate legally. If the Australian Government pays six boat crew members $5000 each to turn the boat around it makes economic sense. Also for people considering using people smugglers it introduces another risk factor into the equation.

I agree with EQ.
I cannot see what is wrong in paying smugglers to return to Indonesia. The sooner that practice becomes widely know, the better.

Once it becomes known, asylum seekers will not hand over cash to smugglers. It is a cheap and simple means of breaking the smugglers' business model because their credibility is destroyed.
The asylum seekers are fleeing countries whose societies have been destroyed by the very belief system they want to bring with them
My father uncle and cousins did not go to war and three of them die to lose our progressive prosperous society to invaders who use a begging bowl instead of a gun.

The Koran has the intellectual validity and integrity of Mein
Kampf and we are as entitled to fight it as we were to fight WW11-- to preserve the liberal progressive way of life of the first world, the only way of life which has produced the inventions, innovations, institutions and progress without which the population of the world could only be one tenth of what it is now for lack of the means to produce, transport and distribute the food and shelter which sustains the present world population.

How much did they pay?

When did they pay?

Who did they pay?

And given we are able to establish that criteria, was the payment, given any was actually made; and that being so? Can anyone prove it was actually paid by a representative of the Australian government?

Rather than a too convenient by half excuse, to rip intending illegal arrivals of their megre resources?

And why would an Australian government agent pay to turn around a boat bound for NZ?

There is more actual evidence that there are fairies in the bottom of my garden, than one can find in this account!

All we have is innuendo, assumptions, speculation, if based on maybe or perhaps; and a fair amount of rabid character assassination of the Men and Women of our navy, who by some patently pernicious accounts, are presented as bald faced tellers of porkies!

And for what?

So that some "politicians" can get their faces on the five o'clock news!?

And then the greens wounder why they're so much on the nose lately, with our sacrifice everything if called on to do so, military!

And let's say I was more than a little surprised to see the alternative senior law officer of the land, getting on to this, he said she said bandwagon!

Evidence "Gentlemen"/"Ladies", evidence!

And it'd make a nice change if you tried talking from a little higher up in future!
Rhrosty.

Binoy Kampark's claims about the Refugee Convention are wrong. The Convention is an out-of-date document designed to deal with post WW11 displaced persons. It has nothing to do with the country-shoppers of today.

It is what has been tacked onto the Convention by the UN to bully gutless Western politicians into accepting and providing for poor people totally unsuited to Western culture.

As for the Australian government's alleged payment to people smugglers, it would have been polite of BK to wait until the governent admitted its great 'sin'. So far, we have only the apparent word of people smugglers, handed down by who knows how many times from different unknown sources.

All Abbott has said is that the government will do whatever it take to stop the boats; and if the payments were made, thy were far cheaper than the cost of looking after they illegals here.

Please keep it in the news. Its makes Labour/Greens look hypocritical, incompetent and portraying crocodile tears. Despite having Triggs, Mann and other Abbott haters on their side, the public can see clearly that Abbott has saved lives, money and by and large stopped illegal entrance in this country. I hope Labour/Greens keep reminding the Australian public of this simple fact. I personally spoke to someone involved in the smuggling business a couple of years ago who told me how thrilled they were when Rudd reopened their business. What a joke!

Did anyone notice the smuggled coming ashore from a commercial ferry ?
Was it the operators of that commercial ferry that got paid ?
Then was it that company that was contracted to bring the passengers
back to Java from Rote Island ?

If that is so then you are all batting your gums in false rightious indignation.

Anyway, when you see the news from the Mediterranean can you have any
doubt that any policy that will stop such a flow to here is worth it ?

Here are some Facts:

1. No one has established that any payments were actually made, the only claims have been from those profiting from the smuggling i.e. the smugglers, the indonesian police and SHY, all of whom are wildly unreliable.

2. Stopping the People trafficking is based on "asylum seekers" paying thousands of $ each to reach Australia. Paying this money to end up where you started is a seriously bad investment that is unlikely to encourage further customers.

3. If payments were made as claimed, they were not to people traffickers, just to drivers of the boats, so it is difficult to see how these payments would incentivise the smugglers to send more boats,

4. Finally, given that on the high seas the UN charter on refugees does not apply, and the interception of human traffickers is legal, it is difficult to see where paying the Indonesian drivers of Indonesian vessels to return to Indonesia with passengers that departed from Indonesia can be illegal considering that payment of criminals as informants to reduce crime is accepted practice world wide.

Do an analysis not name call. Suborning the employees of people smugglers with a small bit of money to turn back means the People Smugglers model is further trashed. It is good Tactics to the Strategy of "Turn Back". "Customers" are going to be knocking on the doors of the Indon Factors wanting their money back and telling others the crew shafted them.
An encouragement to smugglers, NOT, I just wish the nongs who believe this were running people smuggling, it would have collapsed years ago.

I don't trust the Indonesians, many are making money out of smuggling illegal immigrants into our territory for which the Australian tax payer pays the bill. Look at Europe? I know that Indonesia is a large region to police, but somehow we have to stop it. If they are economic refugees some who can not speak English it is easy to con them into how they will be received in Australia. Remember some years ago when the navy turned back people in a orange life boat. One disgruntled man said on TV ' We are Australia's problem not Indonesia, and Tony Abbott will regret it and he will be killed'. Oh yes. The smugglers are believed to have been handed $30,000 to take them back. I think the Abbott government knows more about this than any person not in the loop. There are security questions and that is their affair. We are NOT dumping them in the ocean like some of the smugglers have done in transporting folk to Europe from North Africa and the like. Why don't the UN intervene? Seems they just want to complain about us regarding AGW and our climate policies and the UN Climate change fund, and our treatment of refugees. They have stopped the boats so stick that up Shorten's pipe and smoke it.

Those who read my posts know that I oppose the presence of Australia's navy near Indonesia altogether, that we rather allow boats to reach Australia (then deal with them by not giving them anything).

However, given the existing policy of stopping the boats near Indonesia, can we really tell that the money paid to the crew was for turning the boat back, rather than, say, in return for information they provided about the smugglers and other boats?

Reading between the lines, a dodgy activity at any time, it would seem
to me that the smugglers sent the boat(s) to sea being well aware that
they were very unlikely to reach New Zealand.
How skilled were those Indonesian crewmen ?
We are not now talking about navigating around the Indonesian islands.
Would they have had the experience to undertake a Pacific voyage ?
Did they more than a GPS for navigation ?
According to the report from the Navy/Customs they were concerned
about the seaworthyness of the vessels and the engines reliability.
Was the fuel tank large enough ?
These questions might be more usefully commented on by Hasbeen there !

In view of the questions I suggest that there was only one prudent
course for the commanding officer to take; send them back by hook or
by crook, to coin a phrase.
They almost certainly saved all their lives.