Budi was waiting for a bus in Jakarta when he says a stranger made him an offer that was too good to refuse - 10 million rupiah (about $A1000) to crew a boat that would take a group of people to an unnamed island.

He was 19 years old, uneducated and a long way from his home on the Indonesian island of Ambon. Another man at the bus stop was offered the same deal and, like Budi, agreed without a second's hesitation.

The only catch, they were told, was that they wouldn't get paid until they came back with the boat.

What neither of them understood was that there was never any chance that the boat would make the return journey, or that they would receive the payment.

What neither could envisage, or even vaguely comprehend, was that they would wind up in an Australian jail facing a serious criminal charge with a mandatory five-year jail term.



Budi, not his real name, is an accidental people smuggler, if you accept that cooking noodles and keeping the engine going on an unseaworthy fishing boat for a group of desperate asylum seekers constitutes people smuggling. He is one of about 500 Indonesians in the Australian criminal justice system who share a common bond.

Almost all of them, according to what they have told lawyers, Indonesian officials and Australian Federal Police, are peripheral players in what, for a few Mr Bigs (who never accompany their human cargo to its final destination), is a lucrative business.

It is a sad reflection of the toxic debate between Labor and the Coalition on asylum seekers that one of the few areas of common ground is their support for legislation that denies judges any discretion in sentencing those who crew boats that carry asylum seekers to this country.