I agree wholeheartedly. Professor Rothwell is spot on..............

I am disgusted with the direction of the Howard Governments grovelling appeasement of Indonesia who have been buoyed by the Bush Administration's smokescreen of 'terrorism' as a means to camouflage their own human rights abuses around the world.
Indonesia turns terrorism on it's head and accuses critics of their regime as terrorists !!

The whole world has seen the excesses of the Indonesian Military in the Santa Cruz massacre...The beast has not changed it's spots .

Australia has obligations under International Conventions which we must observe under our own terms and John Howard needs to treat the Indonesian impertinence as an intrusion of Australia's sovereignty and tell them forcibly to control the TNI Violence and govern their own country for the benefit of their citizens instead of world corporations and the enrichment of the ruling Javanese elites.

“Can Australia always decide who comes to this country and conditions under which they come?”

In reality, Australia does not make this decision. The people who have arrived illegally on Australian shores have not been picked by Australia, and they are invariably allowed to stay here. John Howard’s original statement was, and remains, complete nonsense.

“As a party to the 1951 Refugees Convention, Australia has obligations of providing protection to persons with a "well-founded fear of persecution" by reason of their "race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion".

How do we know that asylum seekers do, in fact, have well-founded fears of persecution? Does DIMIA just take their word for it? The whole process is kept secret, and we can have absolutely no faith that the people granted asylum in Australia are entitled to it, under the 1951 Convention or any other criteria.

On the one hand, this author says that Australia must respect international conventions on asylum seekers; on the other, Indonesia must respect Australian law on the matter. If Australia is merely seeing to its international obligations, it appears that Australian law has nothing to do with anything, and why would any country respect another which allows international law to walk all over it, as Australia has done under the Howard Government.

The ‘enhanced’ border patrols mention would be part of the ongoing farce – intercept, tow to Australia and grant TPVs. Unless, of course, the new measures of placing ALL illegals on excised islands announced today actually happens.

Australia has been far too soft on asylum seekers, and DIMIA appears not to have the competence to distinguish a genuine asylum seeker from an economic illegal immigrant, not helped of course by Minister Vanstone who throws her skirt over her head and blames DIMIA for everything.

The United Nations, for all its faults, has far tougher criteria for processing maybe-refugees than does Australia. Australia should stick to taking in those already processed in its official 12,000 per year intake.

Illegals should be repelled and discouraged at any cost.

Well written Leigh. Any illegal entrants should be processed off-shore and should they be found to be legitimate then they should be settled in another country, not necessarily Australia.

We've been letting the US make our decisions for us for years now. Why not let someone else take a turn? And why stop at war and asylum seekers? Why not let the Japanese decide what we can do with our marine life? Why not let China decide what we can do with our mineral resources, including uranium?

And if we don't have the competence to abide by UN sactions regulations, why expect us to be competent in any other area?

We've successfully demonstrated that we can't be trusted to abide by either international, or our even our own, decisions.

We successfully stopped middle eastern refugees from coming here by paying the UN and Indonesia to run refugee camps in Indonesia. Why not hand over the entire decision making process? They're hardly likely to grant refugees asylum in Australia while they can make money out of the camps, are they?

And if rights abuses do occur we always have the old standby - nobody told us.

Sensible article. Says just about the same thing as that by Brown a few days ago. I wd expect the "review" to be largely a sop to Jakarta...something to let them save a bit of face. Certainly we should not give Jakarta any effective say in our asylum policy or decisions.

Good thing Australian govt has come to its senses, now all barbaric Papuan separatist criminals fleeing Indonesia will not be sheltered in Australia, but they will be detained in Christmas Island, Nauru, or Manus Island PNG where these dangerous individuals belong.