Paul,

What a rebel you are!!

You "infiltrated" one open meeting 40 years ago by walking in the door and sitting down. No wonder you feel you are so in touch with the liberal party today. I'm sure they must be devastated you didn't come back.

I have been to a few labor and Greens meetings not because I considered myself 007, but because I wanted to hear what they said. At the labor meetings, while I didn't concur with all their conclusions, I could at least understand the reasons behind them.

The couple of green's meetings I attended appeared like a cult, some naive youngsters with no clue, and some older puffed up "leaders" with not a technical nor economics degree between them, talking in cliches and ignoring any hard questions. All in all pretty pathetic.

Seems to me that there are a lot of half cocked triggers going off here.
Nowhere have I heard or seen that Australian warships entered Indonesian waters.
What I did hear and see on TV by a passenger was that an Australian
ship towed his boat back to Indonesian waters then stood off and
watched them go to an island port.

Now that is substantially different to what many have said on here.
So folks get your facts right and don't make assumptions.
To have towed a boat back is not necessarily entering Indonesian waters.
There is another point, the ship could have been an Aus Customs vessel
and as that is a civil ship it could legally enter Indonesian waters.

So watch what you say and don't make assumptions.

The single most pertinent fact is that there have been no illegal boat arrivals in 3 weeks.

THE BOATS ARE STOPPING

Before leaving this site I feel obliged to add
one more link to this conversation:

http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/2012-2013/AsylumFacts

This work has been prepared to support the work of the
Australian Parliament using information available at the
time of production. The Parliamentary Library staff are
available to discuss the contents with Senate and Members
of their staff. The author, Janet Phillips prepared
this report. She works as a Social Policy Researcher at the
Department of Parliamentary Services in Canberra.
And she has supplied an extensive Bibliography at the end
of this report from which this information was obtained.

If any of you has evidence to contradict what the author
is stating - please feel free to provide it on this forum.
Otherwise your objections don't have much credibility.
Also, if you have any questions, you may also contact
the Parliamentary Library directly.

Cheers.

cont'd ...

Suse gave this link to you gentlemen earlier,
I find it hard to believe that a legitimate
and credible researcher such as Janet Phillips
who's researched this topic so thoroughly,
and provided references all along the way -
is found to be unacceptable to you - when
her information is acceptable to the Australian
Parliament. Amazing!

Foxy, I am not surprised that the 'gentlemen' are not fans of such credible information.
With their obvious concern at the 'invasion' of our shores from all those nasty foreigners in leaky boats, I doubt anything anyone else said would matter.

I am pleased if the drownings have stopped, by whatever means, but have they stopped?
Or are we just not being told?

Australia still accepts many other refugees into this country, so I am happy to see this.
I doubt if the 'gentlemen' are though...