Australia's policy of turning back boats carrying asylum seekers is so base in its ideals and so ruthless in its execution that it has led border control officials beyond the limits of international law. That former prime minister Tony Abbott has proffered it as an archetypal policy for European nations facing pressure from asylum seekers is as saddening as it is bewildering.

Amnesty International contends Operation Sovereign Borders has broken several conventions designed to protect persons from danger or persecution and that the government has breached anti-smuggling protocols. Indeed, it says the government's actions have further endangered asylum seekers. The Age has been saying as much for years.

As The Age's Jewel Topsfield reported this year, Border Force officials in May paid $US32,000 to the crew of a boat carrying asylum seekers off northern Australia. After holding the passengers in cells for some days, officials transferred the entire cohort to overcrowded boats, supplied them with fuel, a global positioning system device, maps and life-jackets, and directed them to land on an Indonesian island.

Amnesty says this act, of paying the crew and aiding covert passage into Indonesia, grafted Australia to the chain of illegalities that is people smuggling. That is how perverted the game has become. What the Abbott government pompously portrayed as a noble endeavour – the protection of lives – was an artifice to satisfy a craven political agenda.