Refugee escapes and boat people put heat on Govt

Indonesia is a departure point for refugees. Photo / AP

Two more boatloads of asylum seekers have been intercepted in the Indian Ocean, adding to the physical and political strains of a rising number of refugees risking death to reach Australia.

The new arrivals will again top up numbers in the overstretched detention facilities on Christmas Island, relieved briefly by the removal of 89 Sri Lankans, Afghans, Iraqis and Iranians to Sydney at the weekend after their appeals for asylum were refused.

As they flew in by a chartered Qantas airliner, controversy was fuelled by the news that four men had escaped from the supposedly secure Villawood detention centre, operated by a private British company.

Political outrage over these escapers - including one who fled while praying at a local church and another who strapped himself under a truck - was inflamed yesterday by the disappearance of a further three Chinese men.

The Opposition is stoking controversy over the surge in boatloads of asylum seekers in the past 18 months.

Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison has also attacked the removal of asylum seekers from Christmas Island to the mainland, citing official figures showing the number of boat people granted refugee status so far this year is already almost double the total for 2009.

"[The figures] back up the claim that Christmas Island has truly become a visa factory under the Rudd Government."

But the debate is also strengthening attacks on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's Labor Government from refugee advocates, who say that even with a renewed influx, asylum seekers pose no threat to Australia.

Yesterday the Greens said the "shouting match" between the Government and the Opposition obscured the fact that the policy of excised territories breached Australia's obligations to asylum seekers.

The previous conservative Government of former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard formally excluded a string of offshore islands - including Christmas Island - from Australian immigration law to deny asylum seekers access to the nation's courts.

Rudd later liberalised much of Howard's harsh approach to boat people, but continued the policy of excised territories.

"Asylum seekers should be treated with compassion, not used as a political football by the Government and Coalition in a desperate race to the bottom on immigration policy," Green immigration spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young said.

The arrival of boatloads of asylum seekers from Indonesia has for years been a sensitive and difficult issue for Australian governments, caught between moral and international obligations, and the political realities of a country that readily regards itself as under threat from an invasion of refugees.

The difficulties have been magnified this year by the impending federal election, narrowing opinion polls and memories of the influence the issue has previously had on voters.

While the Opposition claims that the resurgence in asylum seekers is a result of Rudd easing Howard's more draconian measures, the Government maintains that the rise reflects an international surge triggered by war and economic crisis.

But it does face an emerging crisis on Christmas Island, where a present population of 1911 detainees- temporarily eased by the removal of rejected refugees to Sydney - is placing increasing strains on facilities with a maximum capacity of 2040.

The two boats intercepted on Sunday night were carrying a total of about 80 passengers and seven crew, all of whom are being taken to the island.

There have also been persistent warnings of far greater numbers on the way, including a new report of thousands of Tamils preparing to attempt a dangerous new direct route from Sri Lanka to Australia, bypassing traditional routes through Indonesia or Malaysia.

The Opposition claims that the Government is now preparing to send asylum seekers to a detention centre near Darwin, and that the decision to fly others whose claims for asylum had been rejected to Sydney pending deportation threatened a legal crisis.

"The next plane they got on should have been a plane home," Morrison said. "Once their foot sets down on the Australian mainland it has not been tested in a court yet whether their status changes."

Immigration Minister Chris Evans said that while the Government remained committed to offshore processing and mandatory detention, it was necessary to send some to the mainland from time to time for a range of reasons, including deportation.