Former prime minister Julia Gillard says no boats carrying asylum seekers were paid to turn back while she was in power, weighing in on claims that payments were made to people smugglers.

“We didn’t have the policy of turning the boats around, so no, Labor did not operate the policy it is now asserted,” she told BBC’s Hardtalk program.

But she admitted that her government had engaged in so-called “disruption activity” to stop people smugglers leaving Indonesia.

“Absolutely we worked to try and prevent people smuggling,” Gillard said.

The sentiments echo those of her former colleagues.

On Thursday the shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, told ABC Radio that people who are familiar with intelligence operations “would think it’s surprising if Australian intelligence agencies and Australian federal police working in other countries was not on occasions paying for information”.

Earlier in the week Labor launched a full-scale attack on the Coalition over claims people smugglers were paid $US31,000 last month to turn their boats back to Indonesia, but wound the attack back after the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, refused to comment on whether people smugglers had been paid under Labor’s watch.

Reports in the Australian newspaper on Thursday claimed Australian spies paid people in Java to halt the departure of asylum-seeker boats while Gillard and her predecessor Kevin Rudd were in office.

The report claimed that, while paying people smugglers was not a fixed policy, it had been used in individual cases in the past.

But Dreyfus said paying boats to turn back was a whole different matter that “absolutely crosses the line”.

“That may very well be a crime under Australian law if not Indonesian law. It is no wonder there is now an Indonesian government investigation [into the allegations],” Dreyfus said.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jun/18/julia-gillard-no-asylum-seeker-boats-were-paid-to-turn-back-when-i-was-pm

It may be entertaining to watch the pratfalls of oafish prime minister Tony Abbott — but excruciatingly for Australians, his endless blunders are also covered extensively by the international press. French correspondent Alan Austin reports.

FOR THE world’s media which feed off the pratfalls and humiliations of the notorious, Australia and Tony Abbott have been the gift that keeps on giving. Unfortunately, the prime ministerial blunders are covered extensively by the prestigious press as well.

Australia’s global reputation has taken another drubbing this week. Reports far and wide have highlighted ‘bribery’, ‘democracy undermined’, ‘abandonment of good government’ and ‘Australia plumbing new depths’.

‘Australia paid traffickers’ declared The Daily Star in distant Bangladesh.

‘Pressure building on the Australian Government over alleged payoffs to traffickers’, claimed Mexico’s Sin Embargo.

Similar negative reports have appeared as far away as Haiti, Argentina, Colombia, Kenya, Lebanon, Qatar, Tahiti, Slovakia, Russia, and Somalia.

Critical coverage also appeared in the countries which routinely report Abbott’s gaffes and policy disasters: New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, the UK, France, the USA, Canada, Ireland, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Japan, China, India, Germany, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Sweden and Indonesia.

Those include virtually all Australia’s trade and security partners.

The most damning reports have been in Australia’s immediate neighbourhood. The New Zealand Herald, which was quite forgiving of Abbott’s earlier blunder with the knighthood to Prince Philip, was scathing.

Its editorial, headed ‘Abbott's boat people policy morally bereft’, said: