But unlike thousands who made the journey to a better life before him, he did so aboard a leaky fishing boat with a cargo of 25 Bangladeshi and Burmese asylum seekers.

An ACT Supreme Court sentencing hearing on Tuesday heard Kaubulan, 53, was offered about $640 to crew a boat that picked up the shipwrecked asylum seekers, who had been marooned on a small uninhabited Indonesian island, and brought them to Australia in June last year.

But instead of money, Kaubulan has instead seen the inside of jail cells and is yet to see a cent of the promised fee.

Kaubulan told the court, via an interpreter, he earned about $5 a week as a rice harvester in his home town of Kendari, on the island of Sulawesi.

The father of seven said he was the family's sole breadwinner and lived with his wife and children by candlelight in a tent without electricity.

The court heard he had not seen his family since, but had been ''scolded'' by his wife over the telephone as the family did not have enough food or money and was suffering without him.

Kaubulan, who had been in custody since June last year, pleaded guilty to people smuggling in the ACT Supreme Court on Tuesday hoping he would be home for next month's Ramadan, a month of fasting observed by Muslims.

A court heard the asylum seekers abandoned their first boat and spent 28 days stranded on the island, dependent on food and water brought by other boats.

A boat then arrived, on which Kaubulan was a crew man, to take them to Australia.

The vessel was intercepted by Australian authorities just off Ashmore Island.

Kaubulan was taken to Darwin, where he was held in immigration detention for three months before being transferred to Canberra to face court.

People smuggling prosecutions can be brought in any Australian jurisdiction.

Chief Justice Terence Higgins jailed Kaubulan for one year and nine months, backdated to take into account time served, with the remainder suspended.

The defendant will be released from the Alexander Maconochie Centre into the custody of immigration officials and deported.

Chief Justice Higgins accepted the defendant played a minor but important role in the enterprise.

''The process of people smuggling is a reckless and at times deadly trade, relying on simple folk, such as this offender, to take vessels to their destination,'' the judge said. ''The organisers make large profits but the boat, crew and passengers, they obviously regard as expendable.

''In many ways the crew members are as much victims as the passengers.''

The judge said his participation in the criminal activity had brought great distress and hardship to his family.

''He ought to be ashamed of himself.''

At Chief Justice Higgins request, Kaubulan gave the court a personal assurance to tell people in Indonesia to not get involved in people smuggling.