Toni writes

'It is hypocrisy. Blatant and unashamed hypocrisy. But I bet the rusted on conservatives around here will find some way to defend yet another failure from a truly appalling Government. '

is it possible for the Labour/Greens to ever feel any shame. Now that it is exposed that Gillard/Rudd has paid smugglers you would think they would just SHUT UP. But shameless people led by the abc/sbs just roll on with their moral indignation. Pathetic.

Philip S,

I'm not required to check if another person's post is "correct" when I am quoting them. When you quote someone, you are quoting what they said or wrote - not analysing their stuff as to its veracity or its abridgement.

Therefore, I couldn't give two hoots whether you think Paul didn't include "a whole sentence". We're not bound to include every part of statement if it's not pertinent to the point we're making.

If I was you, I'd get cracking on all the rest of the posts on this forum where people have cherry-picked items for the embellishment of their own arguments. I'd say there would be thousands for you to trawl through - so off you go...and stop wasting my reading space with your ridiculous pedantic squeaking.

One can always rely on Paul's posts for a mixture of confected outrage, mangled facts and rehashed one liners from the green song sheet.

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.

I guess that the main source of concern for the greens is the rapidly dwindling number of detainees that is robbing SHY of her one issue (thus provoking paranoid delusions that security agents were watching her)

"If payments were made as claimed, they were not to people traffickers, just to drivers of the boats..."

Lol!....however it's likely to incentivise drivers to take up a smuggler's offer.

Nice to know that it's just "drivers" out for a sea jaunt who have been paid, and not those nasty people smugglers!

(Apologies to Philip for posting outside his "whole of sentence" edict:)

Dear Bazz,

Paying people smugglers to take people to Indonesia
according to our own immigration and law experts
is not only "unprecedented," but it does constitute
a form of people smuggling and bribery - which is
against both domestic and international law.
Ask any lawyer. Also - remember that business dealings
(paying crims) is a slippery slope at the best of times.

P,

It may incentivise the fishermen to volunteer to drive the boats, but given the collapse of the trade, it is far less likely to boats for them to drive. (and there was never a shortage of drivers before clogging up the courts and jails in Aus under labor)