Talk:Operation Sovereign Borders

Clumsy edits by User:Crocodile2009 supported by abusive or no Edit summaries
User:Crocodile2009 is Edit warring over some very clumsy edits he has made, supporting them with either abusive or non-existent Edit summaries. He has removed perfectly good sources, and combined multiple, independent events into one as if they happened at the same time. He is openly displaying a bias, and abusing me for an assumed political position.

I need him to come here to discuss these matters. HiLo48 (talk) 10:54, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Feel free to back up the claims: 1. The Entire Indonesian Government is against Operation Sovereign Borders 2. Weekly briefings on Operation Sovereign Borders wasn't going to happen. 3. That the foreign minister of Indonesia did not later blame a clerical error for the release of their meeting. The edits previous to yours, and after mine were balanced and facts based not POV. And yes I'm accusing you of bias, you have a history mate. Crocodile2009 (talk) 10:59, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Everything you removed was supported by relaible sources. You actually removed some of these source, which is unacceptable, and added unsourced content - the alleged clerical error. (If you have a good source for that, feel free to add it.) We depend on what reliable sources say. Sourced content belongs in the article. Other content doesn't. HiLo48 (talk) 11:04, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I know this is a bit of a contentious issue but let's try and work out a compromise. -Keepdry (talk) 13:43, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
 * To whom was that platitude directed? I have done nothing but defend a well sourced article against a cowboy who just removes sources he doesn't like, changes reality, and abuses me. HiLo48 (talk) 20:04, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Sentence 1: "Since appointment of the Abbott Government, the Office of the Immigration Minister, Scott Morrison, has stopped releasing information on asylum seeker boat arrivals." is totally and absolutely contradicted by sentence 2: "It later announced it would hold a weekly media briefing." which was new information. Sentence 1 should be therefore REMOVED. There was no merging of information, there was a complete rewrite of the sentence and you have undone it because of your BIAS. Crocodile2009 (talk) 23:52, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
 * LOL. HiLo48 (talk) 06:54, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Directed towards all editors involved. I don't want this article to be marred by partisan bickering. -Keepdry (talk) 09:15, 10 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Cut the crap. My contributions are NOT partisan. It's obvious whose are, and whose edits are also somewhat incompetent. Name the culprit. Edit summaries make it obvious who it is. So don't pretend everyone is at fault just because one bigot arrives on the scene and is treated a little brutally by non-partisan editors. Niceness has little impact on some. HiLo48 (talk) 10:52, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Illogical content in the Outcomes section
Bringing it here to avoid further edit warring:

wvdveer is using a comparison of figures between November a year ago, and last month, to "prove" that the new government's policies are working. For more than half of that period the previous government's polices were in place, so the numbers don't support his point at all. I am making no comment on whether the polices are working or not. Just saying the the chosen period is not the right one to support that point. We would need figures for just the period the new government's policies have been in place, with an allowance for the lag in impact of policies of the old government, some of which would have impacted this new period. HiLo48 (talk) 01:59, 1 December 2013 (UTC)


 * The comparison between two Novembers is needed to account for the seasonal variation in IMAs. It is not a particularly biased choice, as there are higher and lower months between November 2012 and the introduction of OSB.


 * These numbers are "flows", not "stocks", and there appears to be little serial correlation between months. So, there is little need to look at the intervening period between the two Novembers for causality.  November 2013 was a full month where OSB was in operation, and November 2012 was a full month where another policy was in operation.


 * To cover the causality concern, I used "has seen" rather than "has resulted in".
 * wvdveer —Preceding undated comment added 02:24, 1 December 2013 (UTC)


 * What does "has seen" mean? It doesn't make much sense to me. You still appear to be wanting to suggest that there is causality. Those figures simply don't tell us. I still don't see the point in using them. HiLo48 (talk) 02:28, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * PS: When you next click "Edit", note my use of the : symbol to indent our posts, and please use the ~ string to sign and date your posts. HiLo48 (talk) 02:31, 1 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Why won't you discuss this here before making changes? Just mentioning Abbot's claim, from a source whose headline even reads "Both sides claim credit for slowing boat arrivals" is being a bit silly. And I must draw your attention to Wikipedia's Three-revert rule rule. It's why I'm trying to discuss this here rather than keeping on editing the article in breach of it. Please take heed. And again, Andrew Bolt will never be accepted as an independent, reliable source. He is paid to publish outrageous opinions. HiLo48 (talk) 03:46, 1 December 2013 (UTC)


 * The normal protocol is as follows: "When you find a passage in an article that is biased or inaccurate, improve it if you can; don't delete salvageable text. For example, if an article appears biased, add balancing material or make the wording more neutral. Include citations for any material you add." Unlike yourself, I have done this, including further changes in response to your comments.  There is no need to delete a citation to correct information.Wvdveer (talk) 05:29, 1 December 2013 (UTC)


 * The normal protocol says to discuss issues on the Talk page, rather than just editing away willy-nilly, using outrageous, misrepresentational Edit summaries. And I will never apologise for pointing out that Andrew Bolt's blog is a crappy source. HiLo48 (talk) 05:35, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The Policy is working an HiLo48 the Sore Loser is squealing. LOL LOL LOL LOL! Seriously mate, give it up... you guys lost the election and now Abbott is stopping all your illegal Labor boats. Perhaps you should go off and edit the Play School wiki or something and come back here in a few years when you get over your loss. LOL — Preceding unsigned comment added by Crocodile2009 (talk • contribs) 22:56, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh come on, personal attacks are not helpful or warranted. Please try and be constructive and collaborative without name calling and accusing others of political bias and sour grapes. --Canley (talk) 01:09, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree completely, I'll be ignoring said individual from now on as clearly they are upset about the election loss. Articles should be based on facts, not opinion... like for example claiming that the government no longer releases information on Illegal Maritime Arrivals, when clearly they do every week. Or claiming a policy isn't working despite a 90%+ Decrease in Illegal Maritime Arrivals in the space of a dozen weeks... that's clearly an opinion, not a fact. The best way to deal with a situation like this is to put facts and figures into the article and letting those reading the article decide, rather than trying to push some viewpoint. You can spin words, but you can't spin hard numbers.Crocodile2009 (talk) 07:47, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The problem is that the numbers aren't telling us that there has been "a 90%+ Decrease in Illegal Maritime Arrivals in the space of a dozen weeks". The numbers tell us it was over a dozen months, from November last year to November this year. And please stop suggesting political motives on my part. I object very strongly to the policies of both Labor and the Coalition on asylum seekers. I think it's sad that any of them want to take credit for being such cruel bastards, and for manipulating the racists in our society into thinking that what they're doing is a good thing. Some of my best friends are Vietnamese boat people, now happy, successful members of our society. It depresses me that Australia has now become such a mean place. So please drop allegations my comments have anything to do with any alleged support for Labor on my part. I just want to see reliable numbers sensibly used, just as you claim you want to do. But you got it wrong. HiLo48 (talk) 08:05, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I have gone out of my way here to avoid suggesting a political motive for the addition under discussion, and I think wvdveer has also attempted to take a non-partisan approach. It IS difficult to get meaningful figures on which to base realistic conclusions. When the government starts boasting about its success in this area, we have to look for good figures in reliable sources, and I'm not convinced they exist. In saying that I am not saying that the government is wrong. (Nor right.) I am simply saying that we can't tell. We could, of course, trust everything politicians tell us.... HiLo48 (talk) 07:29, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * You have to admit, this is completely Boltian statistical analysis and logic! The maximum temperature on 30 November 2012 was 27°, the maximum temperature on 30 November 2013 was 19°, ∴ the earth is cooling! I certainly agree that we should show statistics of boat arrivals before and during OSB, but I think it's a bit too early to be drawing conclusions, and it is completely statistically invalid to infer a percentage change from two arbitrary points like this with no context. --Canley (talk) 06:36, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I would expect boat arrivals to be Poisson distributed and the number of IMAs per boat to be normally distributed. There were 43 boat arrivals in November 2012.  20 occurences are generally regarded as sufficient to calculate a confidence interval for the Poisson distribution, see http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~rc141/f78sc/notes07.pdf .  The November 2013 figure of 5 boats is 5.8 standard deviations below this, a highly significant result.Wvdveer (talk) 07:13, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thirty arbitrary points in a row, surely? I think the comparison is valid, but drawing conclusions from an opinion piece is going a little too far - we need a more authoritative source. There are actually two comparisons that need to be made, the first is with the Gillard regime, and the second is with Rudd II, whose PNG Solution was having an effect before the beginning of OSB. I'd like to see a longer timespan used for month by month figures - obviously this isn't something like the Pacific Solution where the effect was immediate and dramatic. --Pete (talk) 06:50, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * A three-way comparison between Gillard, Rudd II and OSB would be useful, please go ahead and add it!Wvdveer (talk) 07:26, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Given that Rudd II wasn't in office in a November, it is impossible to find any one month that is common to all three. I was thinking more along the lines of a month by month record for (say) the period from September 2013, updated weekly as new figures are released. On that note, the ABC provides a good record of illegal arrivals since the election, but I haven't found a good source for before that date, though the numbers are certainly around. --Pete (talk) 07:40, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The summaries of the OSB weekly briefings are here on the Customs website. From 2011 to 2013, DIAC used to publish Asylum Statistics, but detailed by quarter not month, and it goes up to July 2013. These are kind of primary sources so it's great the ABC is doing a list, but they would be relying on the same data from the weekly briefings I suppose. There's probably a 2.5 month gap though between July and 18 September... I'm sure some shock jocks were keeping track, but would be great to have a non-opinionated source. --Canley (talk) 12:47, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Just updating - we have a good source for that 90% figure, the Prime Minister. And the Opposition spokesman is claiming a 40% reduction from Gillard to Rudd. Looks like both sides are well-sourced. --Pete (talk) 06:54, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I'm fine with that, two sourced statements from opposing sides—their stats may be questionable but it's referenced they said them. Thanks for adding the table, I just made a quick correction to the November boat numbers (5 instead of 3). --Canley (talk) 12:47, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that. The ABC's list was a bit confusing. Re the figures before OSB, I waded through the DIAC site and emerged little better informed than before. I found a few blogs and things that were keeping track from the daily announcements; there are a few folk obsessed with this issue and they are reliable enough, if we kind of aggregate them, I suppose, but still my heart yearns for something with a government seal on it, rather than some guy beavering away on the dining room table at three in the morning. --Pete (talk) 15:53, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I did find an official DIAC Quarterly Arrivals Table that was released as a Freedom of Information request in January this year. Unfortunately the time periods are all over the place (yearly from 1989 to 2007, the month of September 2008, and quarterly from October 2008 to December 2011). --Canley (talk) 04:40, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Opinion in the Outcomes section
Croc, I've reverted your edit: ''This was the lowest amount of unlawful maritime arrivals for November in 5 Years. ''

Not because it is untrue or unsourced, but because I think we need to talk about it first. If we can get a consensus, I'll restore it, but let's think about coöperation amongst the editors covering this article as a way of moving forward. Expressing a political opinion, however couched, is a good way to create disharmony and conflict.

Now, yes, it's the lowest rate of unlawful arrivals for a November in five years. I haven't checked the figures, but I'm sure it's true. Whether this is because of OSB or not is perhaps too early to say. One could make a good case for Rudd's PNG Solution as having a large role in this result.

And, just quietly, but if we can get a better source than the Daily Telegraph, that would be a big help. --Pete (talk) 03:19, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but this is ridiculous. Getting consensus on something you agree is true and sourced? It's not a political statement, it's an outcome... perhaps not convenient for some, but an outcome none the less. If the Government introduces a policy which specifically targets to do something, we report the results. It's not political to report results, results are results. If the Government introduced policies, lets say specifically target reducing car accidents and after introducing the policy car accidents are reduced to 5 year lows, we report it. We don't ignore it, we report it. And we should now report that November boat arrivals are the lowest in 5 Years, because it's true.Crocodile2009 (talk) 03:42, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Please also note, nowhere was it claimed that this was all caused by OSB, but rather it was just reporting a result. As I said earlier we should stack the article in favour of hard numbers and facts, rather than opinion as what this article started as. We then let the reader decide without imposing a viewpoint on them. I guess we will have plenty more hard, undeniable, factual numbers coming up over the following months and years.Crocodile2009 (talk) 03:47, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not disagreeing with you, but if we don't have consensus, it will not remain. If nobody else weighs in, then I'll take that as a majority in favour of your edit and restore it. Just hang on a day, please? --Pete (talk) 03:51, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * As above, I'm not at all comfortable with comparing two months a year apart, especially when some sort of causality with the party of government changing or commencement of a "Solution" or "Operation" is implied or stated. Even if no causality is mentioned, just making the comparison assumes an annual seasonal/cyclical trend in boat arrivals—this works for weather/climate and so on where there are clearly seasonal trends, but I don't recall it being the case with maritime arrivals. Possible I suppose (monsoon seasons or something), happy to be proven wrong if a reliable neutral source can back up that there is an twelve month wave cycle to IMAs. Croc, your example of a five year low in car accidents is different—that is over a continuous period. Virtually any claim can be made by picking out two time periods without context. Both "sides" of politics are coming up with dodgy statistics and comparisons and will always do it on a range of issues to make themselves look good and effective, and I don't think we should feed into that. I think we should just continue to plot the arrivals under OSB and eventually the table or graph (with some prior context of course, hopefully based on analysis from a reliable source) will demonstrate the effectiveness or otherwise of the program, rather than proclaiming its great success less than three months in, ignoring 11 months in between the periods of comparison. --Canley (talk) 04:11, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Looking at the Miranda Devine article she's quoting Scott Morrison, and reading that transcript of that briefing, he does refer to November as a "traditionally high tempo month" (so there is an assertion that arrivals are seasonal), and claim the lowest [November] arrival rate in five years. As with the Abbott and Marles claims, I would have less objection if the sentence was phrased in terms of Morrison's statement and claim, and that he was referenced as saying it, rather than just stating it as a fact. --Canley (talk) 04:55, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Boat arrivals are definitely seasonal, as rough seas arrive with the monsoon season running from December to February meaning boats have to arrive either before or after these months. That is why it is completely appropriate to compare the same month with previous years. What would be wrong would be to compare a monsoonal month with a non-monsoonal month. I think it is completely fair to compare one month with previous years, ESPECIALLY when it is compared to the previous 5 years.Crocodile2009 (talk) 01:03, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * To show a seasonal pattern, we'd have to show arrivals for enough years to demonstrate that pattern. My concerns are that the Miranda Devine piece is opinion and a poor source, and we don't have a good source for monthly arrivals. Certainly OSB should be shown in context, but it's too early to demonstrate any firm outcome. If, as you say, there is a hiatus from December to February, then we need to wait to see if numbers rise in March, and that's three months away. Added to that is the Rudd II effect, and we need a source before we claim any outcomes. --Pete (talk) 03:26, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * November and December 2013 have now reported to have the lowest boat arrival numbers in 5 Years. With no illegal boat arrivals in 2014 so far, we can assume it will have the lowest boat arrival numbers since 2007. Of course we are now in monsoon season, but it would be silly to suggest the monsoon season never existed pre-Op Sov Bords, that's why we compare the same month to previous years arrivals. Quite clearly the policy is having a very strong and verifiable result on numbers.58.7.37.172 (talk) 05:37, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Got an independent, reliable source that tells us that? Your opinion, like mine, counts for nothing. HiLo48 (talk) 06:17, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Of course, we've got this one from ABC: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-27/asylum-seeker-boat-arrivals-for-december-lowest-in-five-years/5176602 "The Immigration Minister says a total of 355 asylum seekers have arrived by boat this month - the lowest December number for five years." then we have this one: http://www.sbs.com.au/news/fragment/scott-morrison-speaks-weekly-briefing "Immigration minister Scott Morrison has today claimed boat arrivals to Australia in November were at a five-year low." Of course the more conspiracy theorists among us won't accept such hard facts but luckily we have 3rd part sources such as https://twitter.com/gordonthomsonci documenting every boat arrival and there have been one since December 13th confirming what we already know. The. Boats. Have. Stopped. :) 58.7.37.172 (talk) 07:43, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
 * No, it's an independent, reliable source saying that the lower number of arrivals is due entirely to government policies that we need. I'd also like to see a source telling us that these policies are entirely fair and reasonable, and that stopping boat arrivals was really such an important goal. HiLo48 (talk) 09:46, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

ABC Fact Check
The ABC Fact Check unit has looked at the 80% reduction claim with data analysis experts from the University of Queensland: Immigration Minister Scott Morrison not telling the full story on asylum seeker arrivals. Their verdict is: "There has been an 80 per cent reduction. However, the reduction is part of an earlier trend which began under the former government." There is some quite detailed data and analysis on maritime arrivals which could be very useful as a source for claims regarding the effectiveness of OSB/PNG and so on. --Canley (talk) 22:22, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I go along with the ABC. There was a noticeable reduction before the election, before OSB. I think we should include this analysis to make the point. --Pete (talk) 23:40, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Careful there. August 2013 was not significantly less than June 2013.  July 2013 was significantly more than both.Wvdveer (talk) 10:27, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not averse to including the monthly figures backwards a few months, a year, maybe. Otherwise we are going to have people cherry-picking a start date to make their POV look more genuine than it really is. And just where do we get off having an "outcome" section for something that's barely begun?
 * We are also going to get the fringe POV from some quarters that there are no "pull" factors - it is all "push", and that any local reductions must be caused by global events. I think if we are going to include figures, we shouldn't ourselves make any definitive claims; we should provide statements from different sides of the debate and let our readers make up their own minds. --Pete (talk) 17:17, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The problem with the ABC's analysis is that the election was announced the same time as the PNG Solution, so you have a situation where there could be a case of the PNG Solution reducing boat arrivals, or the advent on an incoming Abbott Government reducing boat arrivals. The other problem in presuming/guessing what the PNG Solution COULD do. How many other Labor boatpeople announcements caused a dip in arrival numbers directly after announcement, only for numbers to surge upwards again when they fail to implement it correctly? All future arrival numbers will be based on Operation Sovereign Borders and not past policy.124.148.28.161 (talk) 12:24, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Without attempting to read the minds of people-smugglers and their clients, the pace of events around the downfall of Gillard, the election campaign and the launch of OSB was too rapid for anyone to say with certainty what caused any particular event. One might say that Tony "Stop the Boats" Abbott was going to tighten things up and in the long term whatever Labor did was irrelevant, because Labor was never going to be in a position to implement policy. Or we might say that events were being watched closely on a day to day basis and Rudd's announcements caused gloom all round every time he stepped up to the microphone to announce policy on illegal arrivals. We'll likely never know, and the supporters of one side or the other will happily muddy the waters to make their team look better than the other. We're never going to be in a position to do more than report competing claims. However, we can keep track of the numbers with the aim of giving our readers good information. --Pete (talk) 21:29, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Can we add a global context?
1000 asylum seekers were rescued in the past 24 hours trying to reach Italy. (Here.) This was a bump, but indicative of how much bigger the numbers are heading in that direction than the numbers of refugees heading towards Australia. It has always bothered me that the discussion within Australia has ignored the broader global context of the refugee problem and numbers. Is there any way this article can include some of this context? HiLo48 (talk) 02:15, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure this article is the right place for it, being about a specific domestic program, however that sort of global context should be (and is) included in the broader article Asylum in Australia. The UNHCR statistics for 2012 is probably the best source for this sort of data. --Canley (talk) 10:53, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I guess I'm seeking a bit more "Why?" to be added to the article. The lead says "The operation was an election policy of the Coalition...", which is true. It also says "The operation is an attempt to address issues surrounding people smuggling," which is also true, but not complete. Both the policy and the operation are attempts to win votes. And the climate surrounding the policy is one of pandering to those voters who would prefer fewer strange foreigners arriving in Australia. It's real, and it works, and I wish we could explain more of that in the article. HiLo48 (talk) 22:17, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

HiLo claiming being away for Christmas Holidays is "POV"
Anyone else other than HiLo think that it is relevent to the article to mention there were no Op Sov Borders briefings by Scott Morrison while he was on leave for Christmas holidays? Think we need to get some more eyes on this.124.148.58.102 (talk) 13:46, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree with HiLo. Happy to change that if you can provide a reference or statement that Morrison was on leave rather than us just assuming that he was. The ABC reference on that sentence does not say this. In fact, the Illawarra Mercury and The Sydney Morning Herald on 28 December both stated that Morrison's office was "insisting he was not on leave". --Canley (talk) 20:44, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
 * And anyway, so what? Does the government have nobody else who could make a statement? HiLo48 (talk) 21:21, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
 * There were no boat arrivals during the Christmas period, what would they be holding a weekly briefing about? A weekly announcement that no boats had arrived?RandomUsername765 (talk) 00:31, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I think the answer is in that very post. HiLo48 (talk) 02:45, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Relevance of Wilkies Letter to the ICC
Wilkie wrote a letter to the ICC. And? I could write a letter to the ICC reporting Wilkie for his bastardisation against his Duntroon Cadets when he was in the Australian Defence Forces. Would this make it to his Wiki page? There may be a story here, but it's certainly not worthy of more than a sentence... because frankly if the story is he wrote a letter... a person of no legal authority... then it's POV. 203.206.82.91 (talk) 01:42, 10 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Exactly. It's a stunt. If anything happens, we'll report on it, but otherwise it's meaningless. --Pete (talk) 02:01, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Add an image?
Hi, what about adding an image? Found here:. It is a flier published by Australian Border Protection. JeremyThomasParker (talk) 05:49, 13 June 2015 (UTC)


 * All images should be descriptive and include information that can't be accomplished with text alone - not just illustrative of a point made in the text. What would be achieved by adding the image? What would be conveyed that can't be conveyed elsewhere? -- Aronzak (talk) 07:40, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
 * The "Stop the boats" image added zero value to the article and is my reason for reverting your posting it. — &#124; Gareth Griffith-Jones &#124; The Welsh Buzzard&#124; — 08:24, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Get rid of "Resettlement" section?
I've just added a "Further" template to redirect to other sections... but it has occurred to me that this section doesn't really belong under OSB, is always likely to be out of date, and is probably better removed altogether. There are too many overlaps in related articles already. Opinions? Laterthanyouthink (talk) 01:09, 21 March 2019 (UTC)