By 5 December 2013 asylum seeker boats had been arriving at the rate of one boat every four days during the first 78 days of the Abbott Government’s term in office.
If the failure of the Coalition’s Stop The Boats election promise was not embarrassment enough for the Prime Minister and Immigration Minister, this media report on the same day would have left them in little doubt that their gung-ho Operation Sovereign Borders was fast becoming a joke:
A boat carrying about 25 asylum seekers seekers has made it to Christmas Island without being detected.
Christmas Island's shire councillor Gordon Thomson says a group of about 25 asylum seekers have been living on a remote beach on the south-eastern side of the island since their boat sank on Monday.
Mr Thomson says the group was only detected when some of the asylum seekers were spotted walking along a main road into town earlier today.
"This morning eight or nine people walked up onto one of our main roads from Dolly Beach - the eight or nine people are probably Rohingya," he told the ABC.
"There are another 15 or 16 people still on Dolly Beach who are part of that group, so the total number is about 25.
"Their boat has sunk and they have been living on Dolly Beach since Monday.
"We're told that when offered water and food, they weren't thirsty and they weren't that hungry, so they seem to have survived quite well since Monday.
"They've obviously decided to have a look around on day four."
Mr Thomson says the asylum seekers found on the road have been taken into immigration detention.
"There was a mad scramble [about] 11:30am ... the police and the customs and they went up to pick people up," he said.
"I assume that somebody has driven along the road and has seen the group of people walking along the road and called the cops.
"No one is injured, no one has been lost - that's the information at the top of the road.
"We're yet to hear the details from the group that's still on the beach, but the group that has been taken into detention gave that information to police and that's all the information the police have been able to give me."
A search is underway for the rest of the group...
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