It appears that some of the media are censoring or just deliberately not reporting the arrival of the boats. yesterday afternoon and overnight there were 2 boats with more than 140 people on board.
Maybe it is a little bit embarrassing that while the 3 Australian ministers are in Indonesia having talks Indonesia still can't seem to be able to find any of these boats before they leave.
Now I could be wrong but I would say 140 foreigners standing on a wharf then getting onto a fishing boat would rather stand out.
In 2006 Indonesia had 470,000 police there would be a lot more by now, so why can't they stop any of these boats?

Good point Philip, perhaps the only theory I can come up with is money. Are they (fhe police) being paid off.

Meanwhile, we have no doubt sent a well catered for support crew along for these TALKS and as usual, they will be just that, talks.

Perhaps this government should have been around in the early 1900's to say 1970's, cause at least then our Anzacs would not have been shot, nor our diggers from both world wars or our VN vets, cause all that would have happened was a lot of talk, no action.

At some point, someone must take the big stick approach, and as I say, what is the trigger for that, cause we simply can't keep throwing tax payers dollars at this and expect a resolution just by talking.

<< It appears that some of the media are censoring or just deliberately not reporting the arrival of the boats. yesterday afternoon and overnight there were 2 boats with more than 140 people on board. >>

But Philip, it’s not news any more. It’s old hat!!

We don’t really need to hear about every boat that is arriving while they are coming at such a rapid rate, do we?

Perhaps we should start hearing a bit of political truth each time a boat arrives, such as…..

‘Another example of Rudd’s incredibly stupid undermining of Howard’s border protection policy arrived today.

Gillard’s amazing inability to simply reassert Howard’s policies has led to 140 new arrivals, which makes up a total of …. for the month and …. for the year.

Thanks to this and the Greens’ extraordinarily policies of onshore asylum-seeker facilitation, this latest set of arrivals will cost the taxpayer an estimated x million$. And a total of X million$ for the year so far and XX million$ since Rudd blew our border-protection policy apart’

I think the Gillard Govt is putting pressure on the media.I've heard they have pressured the media over the Bruce Wilson AWU affair eg revoking licences etc.

Perhaps they are threatening to use John Howard'as Sedition Laws.These have been broadly framed to give advantage to the Govt.

Ludwig: But Philip, it’s not news any more. It’s old hat!!

You are right , it's old news. Too much saturation turns readers off. They'll wait for a while then it'll be headlines again. Sells papers.

Ludwig: this latest set of arrivals will cost the taxpayer an estimated x million$.

That's right. It's time to put a limit on how much Australia can afford to spend on Asylum Seekers.

Philip S: 3 Australian ministers are in Indonesia having talks Indonesia still can't seem to be able to find any of these boats before they leave.

The Indos don't want too. They know they are in transit so they don't hinder them. These people are illegal immigrants in their country & they don't want them there, so the sooner they leave the better. They don't want the problem Australia has with associated cost of looking after them.

Just think of the quality of Health Care, Schools, Infrastructure such as Road, Rail & water conservation Australia could have without this unwanted burden being thrust upon us. Maybe, just maybe we wouldn't bitch about politicians pay if they put a cap on Overseas Aid & Asylum spending. Oh! & bring the Navy back to within 200 K of the Mainland. I don't know why we are patrolling in Indo waters. Let them patrol their own waters.

Philip has a point regarding the skewed reporting from certain media organizations.

Every few months a journalist will resurrect the “Tampa” and “children overboard” beat up. Not one fatality from this event but it still rates a regular mention years down the track.

Under the Labor watch we regularly see women drown, children drown and men with life jackets survive and it gets one or two days in the spotlight, then the story is forgotten and buried, like the victims.

Regading Indonesia....stuff em.