Boat arrivals land on remote Western Australian coast

Written by: Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Australian Border Force officials are investigating the arrival of a group of more than 20 men by boat near the remote community of Beagle Bay in northern Western Australia.

The ABC reported that the men, believed to be from Pakistan, had said they had travelled from Indonesia.

The ABF said in a statement it was “undertaking an operation in the northwest of Western Australia.”

But it said as the operation was “ongoing, no further information will be provided”.

Beagle Bay is an Indigenous community about 100 kilometres north of Broome with a population of about 300 people.

The ABC, who had a reporter at Beagle Bay, said one of the man said the group had arrived after a five-day voyage. They had been picked up by locals after walking for some distance. They were pictured sitting in the shade.

One man told the ABC ^[1] he had previously lived in Australia, from where he had been deported. He alleged he had been tortured when he returned to Pakistan.

The Australian government’s policy is to send people who arrive by boat to Nauru, where it has maintained a facility.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he did not know of the incident, when he was asked at his news conference. “I’ve been travelling in the car, so I haven’t been advised about that.”

But he stresses that “our policies are clear, which is that boats that arrive in that fashion … we have policies in place that ensure they are dealt with.”

Opposition leader Peter Dutton jumped on the incident. “Clearly there’s been a catastrophic failure in the system here because this boat has arrived undetected,” he said. “If the Prime Minister doesn’t know anything about it and the minister doesn’t know anything about it, then it demonstrates that this government has lost control of our borders.”

“The government hasn’t taken border protection seriously. The Prime Minister never believed in border protection,” Dutton said.

Shadow defence minister Andrew Hastie said this was “second reported arrival on Australia’s coastline in less than four months”.

“The prime minister’s poor excuse for his inability to take a briefing on a serious breach of our borders, was being in a car. Did he, or his staff, not have a phone between them? He remained unaware of the illegal arrival until media reports made the news public,” Hastie said.

The Border Force statement ^[2] reiterated: “Australia’s tough border protection policies means no one who travels unauthorised by boat will ever be allowed to settle permanently in Australia.

"Australia remains committed to protecting its borders, stamping out people smuggling and preventing vulnerable people from risking their lives on futile journeys.”

The boat arrival comes at the end of a difficult week for the government on the issue of illegal immigrants. Immigration Minister Andrew Giles has faced a barrage of questions in parliament over the government’s handling of the immigration detainees it released late last year after a High Court judgement that they couldn’t be held indefinitely.