Torres Strait could be next target for asylum seekers

Transcript

Some asylum seekers who opt to accept refugee settlement in Papua New Guinea once released from the Manus Island detention centre may consider the possibility of reaching Australia via the Torres Strait, according to one commentator.

The publisher of the PNG Attitude website, Keith Jackson, says the route is short and vast with lots of islands inbetween to hide from authorities, and has been used by smugglers for years with little monitoring by Australian authorities.

Australia's border protection minister, Scott Morrison last week announced several measures to strengthen security on the strait including deploying armed patrol boats to monitor.

Despite this, Keith Jackson told Jamie Tahana that his source on Manus says some asylum seekers are still giving the idea serious consideration.

KEITH JACKSON:  That's what our Manus correspondent reported, he's up there and of course as we all know, the asylum seekers are now being processed and it's expected about half of them will be found to be legitimate and of course soon as that happens the paperwork is cleared they will be released into the community, they are expected to stay in Papua New Guinea.  There's a bit of a conflict about that between the PNG and Australian governments at the moment about whether they will all stay in Papua New Guinea but of course, if those who do stay there still have aspirations to get to Australia then the Torres Strait offers a pretty route.  

JAMIE TAHANA:  How easy is it?

KJ:  Well, there's a lot of traffic across the Strait, in fact there's a saying in New Guinea that goes along the lines of "guns up and drugs back" and that refers to the trade in illegal guns and drugs across the Torres Strait.  There are many islands there, in fact the nearest Australian island to the Papua New Guinea mainland is only a matter of a few kilometres away.  There's also a lot of traditional traffic between the people of the Torres Strait and the people of the Fly region of Papua, who have traditional ties and who have pretty easy passage between the two countries through those islands.   

JT:  Ok, so it will be easy enough.  Are we already seeing instances of this?

KJ:  It's very hard to say.  There's certainly been no reports of it happening so far because of course you have to get into Indonesia Papua or into Papua New Guinea first to make that journey but it's rather interesting the Australian Border Protection Minister, Scott Morrison, just last week did an overfly of the Torres Strait and was telling us in the media that Australia is going to toughen up it's scrutiny of that particular stretch of water, it's also been reported that Australia is going to put 3 fast patrol boats in that Torres Strait area which hasn't been the case before.  So it's clear that Canberra is beginning to think that this proximity to the two countries through a stretch of water which has many little islands in it could pose problems, perhaps not only of drugs and guns but of asylum seekers as well.   

JT:  And we've only just cottoned onto that now. It seems like something that would have been worked out earlier

KJ: Well, it's a case of the blindly obvious Jamie, many of us who are interested in that part of the world have wondered whether this could become a transit route for asylum seekers, certainly the stories are abundance of the drugs and guns traffic, I don't recall anybody every having been brought to book for it, but, yes, as you are suggesting, it's a pretty obvious sort of route once you get into Papua New Guinea.