SBY set to sign people-smuggling accord during visit
The Age
Monday March 8, 2010
NEW arrangements to cope with the surge of illegal boat arrivals in Australia will be announced during the visit to Canberra this week of Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.Debate over people-smuggling intensified over the weekend with the interception by Australian authorities of two boats, carrying a total of 113 people.Opposition Leader Tony Abbott yesterday said Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has lost control of Australia's borders as a result of pandering to "inner-city electorates".Asked if he would have turned the boats away, Mr Abbott said: "A Coalition government would not have changed the situation that was working".However, Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard hit back, saying conflict in Asia, particularly Sri Lanka, was responsible for the growing number of asylum seekers.Dr Yudhoyono is expected to endorse the agreement when he makes an historic address before more than 220 MPs and senators in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, the first time an Indonesian president has addressed Parliament.News of the agreement comes as Indonesia's Foreign Minister, Marty Natalegawa, criticised Mr Abbott's earlier suggestion that boats laden with asylum seekers heading for Australia should be turned back.Mr Natalegawa said he did not want to become embroiled in party politics but said Indonesia had noted Mr Abbott's proposal."We were really quite surprised actually to hear that kind of thought," he said. "I see it as backward. The general concept of pushing boats back and forth would be an aberration to the general consensus that has been established since 2003."In 2003, the government led by John Howard signed up to a regional forum on people smuggling known as the Bali Process.The new deal will include a commitment from the Indonesian government to introduce speedily new laws criminalising people smuggling and stiffer prison terms for human traffickers, while Australia displays more understanding, and provides a guarantee of better consular access to poor Indonesian fisherman who bring boat people to Australia and are detained.It is also expected to include ways to thwart new tactics being used by people smugglers, some of whom are Indonesian, to escape long jail sentences in Australia. The smugglers are now using a second, usually smaller boat, to trail boats carrying asylum seekers from Indonesia.As the boats near Australia's territorial waters, the smugglers transfer from the asylum seekers' boat to the other boat and return to Indonesia.The issue of people-smugglers is widely seen to have overshadowed good relations between Australia and Indonesia on many other issues. More than 240 Sri Lankan asylum seekers have remained on a wooden boat in the Indonesian port of Merak, West Java since last October.Indonesian authorities believed that Australia should have taken responsibility for the people on board because they were in international waters when they were taken aboard an Australian ship.Officials in Jakarta were extremely unhappy with reports last year that the Rudd Government was pushing a so-called "Indonesian solution" where asylum seekers would be kept in Indonesian camps. One of the reasons asylum seekers are prepared to put their lives in the hands of smugglers is that they believe that if they can reach Australia they will almost certainly be allowed to stay. More than 90 per cent of the arrivals at Christmas Island are accepted as refugees.Immigration officials have accelerated the time it takes to process the claims of the people they now call "irregular mariners".Mr Natalegawa also said it was imperative to distinguish between "hard core" people smugglers and the often impoverished fisherman who crew the boats for little compensation, unaware of the criminal sanctions they face in Australia.Meanwhile, a Lowy Institute paper has asserted that Australia's relationship with Indonesia has stagnated because of mutual public suspicion based on issues such as people smuggling and Australians jailed for drug offences, and needs to be dramatically overhauled.The paper's author, Fergus Hanson, says both governments need to invest more time and money in promoting the relationship and integrate the countries' economies more, and that Australia should invest in Indonesian educational institutions.
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