Surprises come from this 'no surprises' government Australian vessels under Operation Sovereign Borders breached Indonesian territorial waters, admits Immigration Minister Scott Morrison. PT3M9S http://www.smh.com.au/action/externalEmbeddedPlayer?id=d-30ys4 620 349 January 17, 2014 - 4:51PM Tony Abbott's "no surprises" approach on border protection suddenly has an asterisk attached to it. We now know that, contrary to the Abbott government's stated policy, there have been several incursions by Australian border protection "assets" into Indonesian waters. The absurdity of the government's secrecy at-all-costs approach was underscored at Friday's press conference when Immigration Minister Scott Morrison and his border protection commander, Lieutenant General Angus Campbell, apologised to Indonesia for the surprise, insisted it was inadvertent and promised it would not happen again. "No surprises" policy: Prime Minister Tony Abbott. At the outset of the briefing, it was made plain the Border Protection commands assets - that is, a number of boats - had entered Indonesian territorial waters on several occasions in breach of Australian government policy. In Campbell's opening statement, he referred repeatedly to vessels, in the plural, that had unintentionally strayed into Indonesian territory. Yet, under questioning, he retreated. The question of how many vessels were involved was one for a review of how this happened, he maintained. Later still, he refused to be drawn on whether we were talking about one vessel or a number of vessels. To what end? Not surprisingly, there was no information on how the vessels came to be in Indonesian waters or what they were doing. Not surprisingly, there was no commitment to publicly release the findings of the inquiry or even its terms of reference. And, not surprisingly, Morrison refused to say whether he considered the lifeboats that have been bought - apparently with the intention of carrying intercepted asylum seekers back to Indonesia - could be defined as border protection assets. If this is their purpose, you can be sure Indonesia will consider them violators of its sovereignty. What was unambiguous was confirmation that Indonesia's concerns about its sovereignty being compromised have been well-founded, even accepting that the incursions were unintended. Even before Friday's revelations, it was reported that Indonesia is patrolling its waters seeking evidence that Australia is turning back asylum seeker boats. Morrison and Campbell might be winning their war against people smugglers, but at some point there will be reckoning on whether the objective could have been achieved by other means, without the surprises and the secrecy and the inflaming of tensions with our biggest, nearest neighbour.