the article starts off with "about 500" over 3 days - but then mentions 497 on friday - from 3 boats which had been intercepted, but later in the article it mentions another boat, with 160 (also on friday) - the boat was in distress northwest of darwin. so on friday, there could have been about 660 boat people
the article mentions 2 boats on wednesday for about 340 people
so possibly 1000 for the 3 days.
time for gillard , with bradbury to jump on a patrol boat in darwin harbour to show that the has everything under control.
shame on labor for dismantling something that was working