Fed: Asylum seekers sailed past navy boat to dock: residents

AAP General News (Australia)
04-08-2009
Fed: Asylum seekers sailed past navy boat to dock: residents

By Warwick Stanley

PERTH, April 8 AAP - A boatload of asylum seekers sailed past an Australian navy vessel,
tied up at the Christmas Island wharf and patiently waited for Customs officials to take
them in for processing, angry residents say.

The federal opposition has seized on Wednesday's pre-dawn arrival as proof that border
security in northern waters is a joke, and that Labor's immigration detention policies
have given people smugglers the green light.

Residents have claimed the boat, carrying 45 people of Middle Eastern appearance, sailed
about 500 metres shy of a naval vessel packed with asylum seekers picked up off Ashmore
Island less than a week ago.

Wednesday's 4am arrival on the island brought to 160 the number of suspected illegal
immigrants detained by authorities in the past week alone.

The 45 aboard, believed to be Iraqis, followed the discovery of the 63 people on a
vessel off Ashmore Island last Thursday, and another 50 on a boat that ran aground near
Thursday Island last Wednesday.

Christmas Island resident Steve Watson said Wednesday's arrivals had been "free to
step off and walk around the island" when the vessel tied up at the jetty before dawn.

He said he received a call shortly after 5am from a friend who told him the boat had
docked and he "should come down here and have a look at this".

"There they were, they'd just walked off their boat, they were on Australian soil," he said.

"It's extraordinary when you think that a navy boat had been within half a kilometre
of them, with 63 for processing though the proper channels."

Opposition immigration spokeswoman Sharman Stone said the blatant nature of the latest
incident was an extremely serious development and a "shocking" indictment on Australia's
border security.

"If it's true they went so close (to the navy boat), and they were standing on the
pier waiting to be delivered into detention by a local, this is shocking, you have to
wonder what's going on," she said.

She said Australians would be right to wonder if the Rudd government's national border
security agency, rebranded Border Protection Command about a month ago, was a joke.

"We have to wonder if the new agency is just inept and incompetent or under-resourced,
or both," she said.

"This is the latest in a series of bungles ...

"We've now got this issue where people had to land themselves into detention because
they were apparently overlooked or unseen in Australian waters."

Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus issued a statement confirming a group of 45 people
had arrived by boat on Christmas Island on Wednesday morning.

He said they would be detained to undergo health, security and other checks to establish
their identity and reasons for their voyage.

"The group did not arrive on the mainland," his statement noted.

"The government's priority was to ensure the Australian mainland was secure and that
assets under the control of Border Protection Command were positioned accordingly.

"Christmas Island is approximately 1,000 nautical miles from the mainland. The priority
is to conduct surveillance to ensure that vessels do not reach the Australian mainland."

Mr Watson said there had been men, women and children of Middle Eastern appearance
aboard the unauthorised vessel, which was flying the Indonesian flag.

He said he'd been told many of them were Iraqis and that several were sick, but he'd
been unable to verify the reports.

Christmas Island shire president Gordon Thomson said that when he went to the jetty
to inspect the boat, the 45 arrivals had been taken away to be processed by Customs officials.

"I counted about 40 life jackets on the jetty which they had taken off and I definitely
saw children-sized life jackets," Mr Thomson said.

West Australian Greens senator Scott Ludlam said the latest arrival did not mean Australia
had become a soft touch for people smugglers.

The number of people arriving in Australia by boat was relatively "tiny", he said.

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