Last updated: December 29, 2014



Cruelly exposing a failure in policy

A GOVERNMENT is in policy trouble when asylum seekers in miserable circumstances in Indonesia can debunk spin.

The way the government has implemented its "no advantage test" for boat arrivals is a big advantage, as the people waiting to board boats have now revealed.

A gift worth a party, they say, and a dangerous boat journey just as the deadly monsoon season rolls in.

After Australian detention centres filled up, all future capacity of Nauru and Manus Island was exhausted and the boats kept coming, the government said last month it would release thousands threatened with offshore processing into the Australian community. It was tough, the government said, because there would be "no advantage".

Asylum seekers could stay years on bridging visas and wait for their permanent protection visa for as long as they would if they had remained in Indonesia.

Except by comparison to the misery an asylum seeker faces in Indonesia or in camps around the world, it isn't tough at all.

They get $440 a fortnight, rent assistance and free healthcare.

It's not the first time the government has been exposed.

Asylum seekers and people smugglers are listening.

They know that for years after ending the Pacific Solution, Labor said Nauru wouldn't work so they simply overwhelmed its capacity when it was reopened.

Smugglers have been telling asylum seekers for months they could come to Australia and not be sent to Nauru.

As it turned out, they were right. And so it will go on.