Recently another four boats transporting economic immigrants were found on the West Australian coast, up in the Kimberley region. The number of people trying to get into the country has increased by 50 per cent, while surveillance has lessened.

Australia can have any amount of illegal immigration by boat it wants. If the borders are weak, then Indonesian-based people smugglers will buy leaky old fishing boats and cram them full of arrivals from all sorts of countries at $10,000 a head. Then a crew of perhaps two will take each as far as they can before abandoning the vessel within sight of the Australian coast, unless they’ve been paid to go along with capture and taking the option of a free flight home.

Any would-be immigrants taken into detention are quickly on the phone advertising they made it, and thus endorsing the package. Stand by for the trickle to become a flood.

One of the reasons the people smugglers sense an opportunity is because a Labor government may be weak on border control. The Rudd government was disastrous. Prior to election it campaigned on a strong line, and then on assuming office it promptly reversed itself. In a matter of months boats started arriving, and eventually more than 50,000 would-be immigrants poured in. Between 2007 and 2013 not one boat was turned back. Eventually this so-called compassionate approach – in fact it’s the opposite – had to be reversed.

After the disastrous Rudd administration, governments worked out that if you didn’t allow the detainees access to the mainland they slow and then stop their numbers. The deterrent was Manus Island, north of Papua New Guinea, and here they were taken and accommodated – forever. Of course, if you eventually said you were not a persecuted genuine case, then you could board a government-chartered aircraft and go home.

In April fifteen asylum seekers arrived by boat in the remote north of Western Australia. Thought to be Chinese, the boat was the third such arrival since last November. Or was it?

One of the hidden factors in the whole equation – alarmingly – is that although border authorities say they intercept all arrivals, how do they know? That can only be true if they know a) how many have set off, and b) does that number match those intercepted? The government doesn’t release much in the way of figures, but according to asyluminsight.com we are looking at a 50 per cent increase.

Between 1 May 2022 and 30 June 2024, 18 boats carrying a total of 315 people were intercepted at sea. The people were either transferred to Nauru or returned to their departure point. That’s a big increase on a former set of numbers: 38 boats and 873 people seeking asylum were returned under Operation Sovereign Borders between 2013 and 2021. Put another way, 315 people in two years now, and 873 people in eight years previously, or if you like, 109 people a year has become 156. That’s a 50 per cent increase.

Although the numbers themselves are small, they are a dangerous portent. It’s obvious the evil organisers are testing us again. Any faltering would mean more boats, and likely more deaths too. These business models allow for no care to be taken of the passengers. The past models show for example life jackets are only supplied because they make more passengers go along, and often any life-saving equipment is faulty, old and sometimes even faked. It’s an appallingly cruel practice now becoming a worldwide problem: advertise a trip to Australia, the land of social security and well-paid jobs; encourage punters to fly to Indonesia; insist on ten thousand dollars in cash; tell the passengers the boat will be safe; tell them to throw their passports into the sea and make up a nationality and a refugee story; and then abandon them in sight of land or a Royal Australian Navy vessel.

The border patrol people have had sterling success reversing this. Policies included turning the boats around at sea and towing them back to Indonesia, while fighting off attempts to prevent this. When the people-smuggling model turned to sinking the boat when a RAN vessel arrived, knowing legally the Navy had to rescue the people, the response was to put everyone into a modern unsinkable lifeboat and tow that back to Indonesia, almost running it onto a beach and ensuring there was no fuel left.

Tacitly encouraging the trade by not stopping it firmly is dangerous. There is no way Australia should allow it to happen, because the trade’s very structure of using cheap unseaworthy craft is hazardous – people who can’t swim, often including children – and means a real prospect of drowning. The ‘Suspected Irregular Entry Vessel’ which sank near Christmas Island in 2011 proved that point. Fifty people died in the worst civilian maritime disaster in Australia in more than a century.

Now even the Guardian newspaper admits it is ‘correct that fewer surveillance flights were operated in Labor’s first year in office’, but argues this was because of operational difficulties, not a policy or planned reduction. But it’s important to project a model of aggressive patrolling, because it will lessen the number of attempts, and because it’s actually cheaper in the long run, in two ways.

The first is intercepting ten boats in a highly visibile way and refusing their passengers sends a message to the waiting scores of others. Better to spend money now – even with lots of flying surveillance and lots of maritime interdiction – than be forced to quadruple the effort later because the hordes keep coming. But also it’s cheaper further down the line. Detaining ten illegal asylum seekers now is less expensive than detaining a hundred later: in accommodation, security, medical assistance and all of the other costs detention involves. And don’t forget that detention could be for years.

In the end, who wants to see people die trying to get to Australia? There is a right way to do it – apply to become a migrant. And for real refugees, this country has always been generous. Even the Refugee Council of Australia says that, ‘over 10 years Australia was third overall and second on a per capita basis’.

The picture is clear: we must be strong to save lives.