Yet another boat load of Passengers is escorted to Christmas Island for processing.

The Navy has intercepted another boatload of asylum seekers near Ashmore Island off the north-west coast of Australia.

Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus says it is believed there are 73 passengers and four crew on board.

Notice the official numbers being pushed down by the use of the "Crew" classification... Can this government help but run some line of spin?

Bob Debus calmly explains the arrival of boat number 12 for this year; 

"Then it was intercepted early this morning by the patrol boat Launceston and the customs vessel Holdfast Bay," he said.

"There appear to be 31 passengers, all male and they are believed to be from Afghanistan."

The asylum seekers are being taken to Christmas Island for processing.

Mr Debus says the successful interception shows the border protection measures are effective.

Passengers?!? Well they are on a ferry service after all, orderly procession to Christmas Island for about 90 days then shiped to the mainland.

What do you do?... You stop the boats. How do you do it?

The proven way... the way that worked before.

It is emerging that there was an intention to set the boat alight, though not to cause a suicidal explosion. One Northern Territory investigation source said: "It is firming that it was deliberate."

Another source claimed: "The recurring theme here is that the Indonesians splashed petrol around the vessel so their passengers would have to be rescued and taken aboard the naval ship."

Vessels used to smuggle asylum seekers are written off by organisers, because they will invariably be destroyed in Australia. The cost is built into passenger fares.

Likewise, Indonesian crew are often paid upfront and give the money to their families before departure, because they expect detention.

Time for Rudd to admit he is wrong again, and backflip on his softer immigration policies. Before more people are killed.

But that wouldn't make your policy softening responsible would it...

KEVIN RUDD faces a continuing influx of asylum seekers after another boatload has been intercepted on its way to Australia.

It is the 11th vessel to be intercepted this year and is believed to have been carrying 50 asylum seekers.

What, can't our sailors count anymore, or is the order out to haze the issue with delayed detail (ie Numbers Aboard)?

Again Debus, The Minister for Home Affairs, wheels out the usual platitudes;

"The Australian Government will continue to deal effectively and appropriately with people smugglers."

Well I guess Debus, being a Labor Minister, can't be expected to have any concept of 'Supply and Demand' can he?

Firstly let me apologise for the lack of posts, "life interrupts" is my only excuse. As if to remind me of the importance to continually monitor this Dudd government, and its policy nightmares, this happens;

Another two boats carrying suspected asylum seekers have been intercepted in Australia’s northern waters — making 10 seized over the past four months.
  
Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus said one boat carrying seven people had been detained near Ashmore Reef off WA’s northern coast.
  
The other was found 27 nautical miles west of Bathurst Island near Darwin. An estimated 72 people were aboard the boat, which was flying an Indonesian flag.
  
The arrivals are being taken to Christmas Island for processing. No information about their nationality was given.
  
The arrival of the latest boats puts more pressure on the Federal Government as it struggles with a surge in asylum seekers. There have been 442 boat people — asylum seekers and crew — intercepted in Australian waters this year.

We are but scant weeks past the end of cyclone season and already our Christmas island facity is breaking under the strain;

OPEN recreation areas have been set up as dormitories and dozens of bunk beds have been flown in to Christmas Island's detention centre, where the imminent arrival of 136 asylum seekers and boat crew is placing pressure on resources.

There are already 262 asylum seekers in various forms of detention on the remote island - the highest number since the mass arrivals that preceded the Tampa stand-off in 2001.

The surge that began last September has so far delivered 411 asylum seekers to Christmas Island, and the rise in numbers, although good for local businesses, has created an expensive challenge for the Government.

Last week, the Department of Immigration reverted to bringing in staff, contractors and supplies on commercial flights to save about $70,000 it had been spending each Thursday on a charter flight from the mainland.

Since 2001, the commonwealth has invested more than $500million in detention-related infrastructure on the island, including 162 bedsits, five duplexes and two houses for staff and community detainees, but shortages are now being felt keenly.

The Boat blast is political dynamite for the Rudd government, but he has the right man on the job in the NT police;

Commissioner White says "hundreds of people" are still to be interviewed and he could not say if a Darwin forensics team had discovered any information after recently examining debris from the blast.

Stonewalls continue until the Australian people forget all about it, as the media seemingly has. This is perhaps the most disgraceful episode of cover up in our nations history.

Its a flood alright, just as the last 32 boat people are arriving at Christmas island we find another boat;

The Australian Navy is taking 56 people to Christmas Island after finding them on a boat in international waters of the nation's northern coast.

Seems the end of the cyclone season has indeed brought about the anticipated flood.

The evidence doesn't come any cleaner than as a confession from the perpetrator;

An Iraqi refugee in Indonesia has told the ABC he plans to board a boat to Australia because he is encouraged by changes to asylum seeker policies.

"Kevin Rudd - he's changed everything about refugee. If I go to Australia now, different, different," a second asylum seeker told the ABC.

"Maybe accepted but when John Howard, president, Australia, he said come back to Indonesia."

He says Kevin Rudd will not send him back to Indonesia and that is why he will be getting on a boat again.

Rudd is hit right in the face with this confession but yet gets airtime with this nonsense;

"I ran into a bloke the other day who hopped on a boat in 2001 in the midst of Mr Howard's prime ministership and as I was advised was informed that once he got to Australia under Mr Howard there'd be two free houses and three free tractors.

"It's a rumour mill out there."

Now did Rudd actually meet this person he talks of? After all he said he ran into him... Then why was he just "advised" as to what information the guy had. Its either poor grammar or an arse covering approach to a patiently false statement. 

Rudd polices encourage people back on boats and endanger lives. Full stop. Shame the media still are not prepared to report the facts, still preferring the Rudd spin. 

Boat after boat arrives and whats the best Rudd can do to try and stem the tide? Why send a delegation overseas of course.

WAVES of Australia-bound asylum seekers crossing from Malaysia to Indonesia have prompted the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, to send the national security adviser, Duncan Lewis, to talk with Malaysian officials about counter measures.

Mr Lewis was accompanied by the head of Customs, Michael Carmody, and senior immigration and Australian Federal Police officers. Before leaving Kuala Lumpur yesterday, members of the delegation said the meetings with Malaysian officials were "positive".

"There has been agreement at a conceptual level for increased co-operation and engagement to combat people smuggling," one member said.

A similar delegation is expected to go to Sri Lanka next week.

As usual Rudd pontificates trying to do things "his way" rather than falling back on policies that are actually proven to work. One wonders how much we will end up "Subsidising" the Malaysians and Sri Lankans for their support?

Still no word of how much we will be paying the Indonesians for their police action.

When will Rudd admit his immigration policy has failed;

BORDER Protection Command has intercepted a boatload of 32 suspected asylum seekers, the 14th arrival since the Rudd Government announced a series of changes to Australian law aimed at softening the treatment of refugees.

and still there is another boat on the radar believed to hold 100 to 150 more illegal immigrants.

Lets see... the government has not released a jot of information of how, or why, the SIEV 36 boat exploded and killed 5, maiming many more.

But the lawyers are lining up for juicy cases they consider low-hanging fruit;

A human rights lawyer says the Federal Government could be liable to pay compensation to the families of those killed and injured after the Ashmore Reef asylum boat explosion.

Greg Barnes from human rights group Rights Australia says because the boat, known as SIEV 36, had been taken into custody it may emerge the Navy had a duty of care to the asylum seekers.

"One of those (grounds for compensation) could be that the Navy didn't exercise its duty of care sufficiently or was negligent in the way it dealt with the asylum seekers who were in very dangerous waters," he said.

How about if the Navy blew up the boat, then they are culpable. Otherwise, it will be an accident, or a murder charge for the scumbag that deliberately set fire to the boat.  

Spot the single word that may see Minister for Immigration Senator Chris Evans head on the block, as the Rudd government tries to claim a Lilly-white complexion on immigration.

BARRIE CASSIDY: One other report at the weekend suggested the AFP recently warned the Government that your policies were making the country a target for people smugglers. Did you receive such a report from the AFP?

CHRIS EVANS: Now look this isn't an agency in my portfolio Barrie so I wouldn't receive it. As I say this is not an agency in my portfolio.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Do you know whether any other minister received advice to that effect?

CHRIS EVANS: Look we wouldn't discuss any advice we received anyway Barrie but I've made it clear I've received no advice because I'm not the minister responsible for the AFP.

BARRIE CASSIDY: You didn't but do you know of any such advice?

CHRIS EVANS: No. 

Sounds like an outright lie to me. When the truth does surface it will also be clear that Evens must go.

The Truth is out;

Senior Government sources have confirmed to the ABC that asylum seekers on board a boat that exploded last week had doused the deck with petrol as a threatened act of sabotage.

The Government says it will not comment on what caused Thursday's fatal blast while a police investigation is underway.

But the ABC has been told the asylum seekers doused the boat in petrol to try and force the navy to let them land in Australia and not turn them back to Indonesia.

Scant hours after Gillard was continuing the information stonewall on the incident;

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard says the Government is not suppressing information about last Thursday's fatal explosion on a boat carrying asylum seekers.

Gillard was not just lying about the amount of information she knew, she was not only suppressing the details that West Australian Premier Colin Barnett has known, and has been pushing for the release of. Gillard has engaged in a cover up of facts while the Rudd government can concoct its spin approach to the matter.

Rudd cannot avoid his culpability in this. It is his policies that are pulling these illegal boat people into the arms of people smugglers, and to our shores. His policies that place people on the boats, and by extension into the very real grave danger associated with dangerous people prepared to douse a boat full of people with fuel as a procedure.

Why would sabotage to their own boat be procedure? Rudds 2007 Election Promise is why;

Rudd said Labor would take asylum-seekers who had been rescued from leaky boats to Christmas Island, would turn back seaworthy vessels containing such people on the high seas, and would not lift the current intake of African refugees.

"You'd turn them back," he said of boats approaching Australia, emphasising that Labor believed in an "orderly immigration system" enforced by deterrence.  

Can someone explain the difference between paying Nauru to process illegal boat people and paying Indonesia to do the same?

THE Rudd Government is expected to announce a big funding increase for Indonesian police and immigration officials as they grapple with a surge in asylum seekers from the Middle East.

New surveillance equipment and training programs for Indonesian authorities combating people smuggling are at the centre of the package, which The Sun-Herald understands has the support of cabinet's National Security Committee.

The multimillion-dollar package is also expected to assist Indonesia to improve its stretched immigration detention facilities.

Indonesia has had an influx of asylum seekers from the Middle East since September last year. Four boats have made it to Australian waters in the past few weeks carrying about 200 people. Two other groups, who said they were heading for Australia, have been prevented from leaving Indonesia in the past week.

Lets be clear, these illegals are simply stopping in Indonesia before traveling to Australia.

Is Rudds solution to damn them to detention at the hands of the Indonesians? Where is the outcry of left outrage?

What assurance do we have that the money will go to the programs that will benefit Australia? The amount, whatever stupid amount it will be, should be poured into Australia's border defence resources.

The sad fact is, much of this money could be saved if Rudd could just be capable of admitting he made a mistake by softening immigration policy, and reverse the damage. 

Rudd's hubris continues to cost us many billions of dollars we cant afford.