If a claim that the seventy eight Tamil refugees on the Australian Oceanic Viking have lived in Indonesia for years - and have been accepted as refugees by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees ( UNHCR ) is true, it puts a big hole in Kevin Rudd's contention that the increase in boat people is simply the result of civil wars in other parts of the world.
What it does reflect is that some refugees demand the right to pick and choose where they will settle, and that some have every intention of forcing their way into Australia simply because our lifestyle is attractive.
Even if these people are Tamils fleeing a civil war in Sri Lanka, now would be a good time to have a reality check.
Tamil people fought a long and bitter war to try and wrest a separate homeland from the majority Sinhalese. For decades the country was impoverished, thousands died and the tourist trade was destroyed.
Eventually the Tamils were defeated - and now the victors have every right to sift through those survivors prepared to start a new war and intern them until they can safely be reintegrated into the Sri Lankan community.
For some reason the world tends to treat the end of a civil war like a soccer game. The adversaries do not simply shake hands and head off for a few beers together when the final siren sounds.
The logical destination for Tamils who are not prepared to face reality and integrate into Sri Lankan life would be nearby India - with it's own Tamil majority states.
But India is a poor country - and so these refugees reject it, Malaysia and then Indonesia in their determination to dictate where they will settle.
Sooner or later Kevin Rudd will have to face the fact that the previous governments hard line policy worked - and the flow of such refugees faded to a mere trickle.
It all started again and the people smugglers were back in business from the moment he relaxed that policy.
All the spin in the world will not change reality !
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