Together, they broke up planned boat trips that were about to carry some 1500 people on promised voyages to Australia. The Customs and Border Protection Service had asked the Labor government for the $60 million for the same purpose. The money was refused. Initially, the Abbott government found the Indonesians willing to co-operate at sea as well as on land. In September, within days of the Coalition taking office, a boatload of asylum seekers was spotted at sea, in distress. Australia's Customs and Border Protection service rescued the passengers and then handed them over to an Indonesian ship that stood ready to take them on the high seas. A second boat got into trouble in the same month. Again Australia rescued its passengers and again Indonesia accepted them in a transfer at sea. But it was in October that the new Australian command made its first attempt to "turn back the boats where it is safe to do so," in the words of the Coalition's election promise.

The Minister for Immigration, Scott Morrison, had restructured the organisation to require the various departments and services involved to co-operate with each other. The new command brought together the Customs and Border Protection Service, the Australian Federal Police, the immigration department, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service and the Australian Signals Directorate. Morrison put this together using the same officials who had served Labor. They were put under the newly created command of a freshly promoted three-star general, Lieutenant-General Angus Campbell, and the show was badged Operation Sovereign Borders, or OSB, which the Greens lampoon as Operation Secret Boats. The first turnback went smoothly. The Australians towed a boatload of asylum seekers back towards Java and the Indonesian navy accepted the boat at sea. The passengers were returned to Indonesia. A second boat was towed back early the next month, and again the Indonesians accepted it, but it was to be the last. As the Howard government had learnt with its boat tow-backs, the Indonesian authorities are prepared to co-operate with their Australian counterparts only in secret. A third attempt to "turn back the boats" was aborted when word of the operation leaked out and the Indonesians withdrew.

Would Indonesia's services be prepared to work with their Australian counterparts on further tow-backs? The spying revelations by Edward Snowden in mid-November put a decisive end to any such possibility. Australian spying on Indonesia is no surprise to Jakarta. Nor are Indonesian interception programs against Australia any news in Canberra. They are part of the daily reality. But the revelation that the Australian Signals Directorate had targeted the mobile phone of Indonesia's President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and his wife was a serious embarrassment to him. It did not matter that the spying was done during Labor's term. It mattered only that it had been done by Australia, generally perceived as an unsympathetic and condescending rich power. The former general cultivates a regal air. He had been deeply humiliated in front of his people.

When he demanded an explanation from Tony Abbott to recover his dignity and restore Indonesia's national honour, Abbott refused. Jakarta's political system and media lit up with anger and indignation. Abbott had left SBY no alternative. He ordered co-operation with Australia halted across a wide range of activities including Operation Sovereign Borders. That is where it remains today. The turnbacks continued, but without any Indonesian co-operation. Five asylum seeker boats were intercepted and towed back towards Java. It was in mid-January that the first sighting of a mysterious, bright-orange lifeboat was reported.

The fully enclosed boat, or capsule, of the type commonly used by big commercial ships, came to rest on the Java coast. It carried asylum seekers who had set out for a trip to Australia in a wooden boat and returned a few days later in a brand new orange fibreglass and plastic one. The Australian government has not commented on the boat, but it didn't require Sherlock Holmes to figure out that it had been supplied to the asylum seekers courtesy of the Commonwealth of Australia as they were helped on their way back to Indonesia. Australia has now repeated the exercise twice more with the life capsules. Jakarta is not impressed with the phenomenon, a sign of Australian meddling along the archipalegic edge. But the Australian authorities are well pleased. The bright orange lifeboats have two advantages from Canberra's viewpoint. They are pretty much unsinkable. This calms the consciences of the Australian personnel who have to load the asylum seekers into them for the journey back.

Second, they are irrefutable, neon proof on the Indonesian shoreline that the people smugglers are unable to deliver on their promise of passage to Australia. The market price for a place on a boat to Australia is signalling that the message is getting through. The people smugglers had been charging $10,000 or more but now promise passage for as little as $1000. The most recently intercepted boats are far from full; some have carried as few as 25 to 30 passengers. In one case, nine separate syndicates of people smugglers pooled their passengers and still failed to fill a single boat. When Australia conducted a joint naval exercise with Malaysia late last year, their patrols of the Malacca Straits intercepted three boats carrying asylum seekers. Two were bound from Malaysia to Indonesia, doubtless with Australia their ultimate goal. But the surprising discovery was the third; it was heading the other way. The asylum seekers had given up on passage to Australia and were retracing their steps back north. The flow of boats slowed sharply after the Rudd government signed the agreement with Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister, Peter O'Neill, to reopen the Manus Island centre and to resettle asylum seekers in PNG.

This agreement was the basis for Rudd's declaration that asylum seekers "will never be settled in Australia." The number of arrivals fell by some 40 per cent between that announcement and the September election. But under the Abbott government it has dwindled further. Friday marked the 71st day without a boat arrival. This is the longest since Rudd dismantled the successful Howard government policy in 2008. It has been six months and with 1500 journeys disrupted on land, two rescues at sea and eight turnbacks. It is premature for Abbott and Morrison to declare that the boats have been stopped. They might just be paused; Australia's northern approaches are still in monsoon conditions, always a seasonal lull in people smuggling because of the stormy conditions. The end of the monsoon will bring a critical test of the syndicates' determination and of the Australian government's policy.

Almost all recent media and political attention on the subject has been turned to the problems with the offshore processing and detention facilities. This is perfectly understandable. The problems are real and they are serious and they are not going away. The riot in the Australian detention centre on Manus Island, the one that killed Reza Berati, is the latest but will not be the last of the traumas begotten by this draconian system. But if there is ever to be an end to the suffering in the detention centres, the only realistic solution will be when there is an end to the arrival of new detainees. Likewise, the only realistic way to bring an end to the drownings at sea that took the lives of 1100 asylum seekers in the last few years will be when there is an end to the flow of unsafe boats sent to carry them. This is why Labor is struggling to make political capital out of Morrison's discomfort over the Manus Island riot. Labor reopened Manus, in an effort to achieve the same thing that Morrison is trying to achieve - stopping the boats.

But attention is overwhelmingly on the detention centres for another reason: Morrison's wall of silence on "operational matters" means that the media and the opposition cannot see what's happening with the boats. The detention centres are the only visible part of the picture. Loading So far, Morrison's policy has been ugly but effective. He has no critics within his party, even among the moderate Liberals. One of his ministerial colleagues put it this way: "When we look at Scott, we think two things. One, 'thank God it's not me in that job.' Two, 'it's working.'" Peter Hartcher is the political editor.