Lenore Taylor, political editor

theguardian.com, Friday 23 August 2013

$440m regional plan to combat people-smuggling includes Indonesian village wardens and $20m to buy fishing boats

Tony Abbott and the shadow minister for immigration, Scott Morrison, at a press conference in Darwin. Photograph: Mike Bowers/Global Mail

Australia will spend up to $20m on buying fishing boats from Indonesians who might otherwise offer them to people smugglers and on “bounties” for villages providing information about people-smuggling activities under a $440m “regional deterrence” policy announced by the Coalition.

The “village watch” program would be undertaken with the International Organisation for Migration and would pay a “stipend” to “wardens” in villages along the Indonesian coast who act as an intelligence “eyes and ears on the ground”, a “capped” amount for fishing boat buy-backs and “in exceptional circumstances” bounty payments for specific information that leads to people-smuggler arrests.

The policy also says a Coalition government would “seek” to deploy Australian federal police to Indonesia, Malaysia and Sri Lanka to work with local intelligence officers against people smuggling and allocates $67m for this part of the policy.

“It’s much better to spend a few thousand dollars in Indonesia than spend a few million dollars processing the people who arrive here,” Abbott said, announcing the policy in Darwin.

But Kevin Rudd ridiculed “Mr Abbott's plan to have … [a] three-star general sitting at the end of a jetty with a cheque book to buy back fishing boats in Indonesia”.

And the immigration minister, Tony Burke, said boat buy-back was “simply crazy policy” because there were at least a quarter of a million fishing boats in Indonesia.

“Of all the mad ideas I have heard in immigration, I think boat buy-back wins,” he said.

Abbott said the Indonesian embassy had been “informed” about the plan and there was “no reason to think the Indonesians won’t be prepared to work co-operatively with us” because “it is Indonesia’s interest to stop the boats”.

But Burke said informing an embassy after a policy had already been leaked to the media was no way to treat a regional neighbour.

“They talk about deploying Australian federal police – just think if another country said they were sending their police force to our country to conduct their operations,” Burke said.

Abbott said the policy would also include:

• Giving $27m to Indonesia for its aerial surveillance and up to $71m for its search and rescue capacity to boost Indonesia’s ability to rescue asylum seekers within their search and rescue zone.

• Seeking to establish “transit zones” to which asylum seekers could be directly transferred before being taken to offshore processing centres so that they never arrived in Australia.

• Appointing a special envoy to work on deterring people smuggling with regional governments.

• Leasing commercial vessels to help border patrols and to help transfer asylum seekers to the “transit centres”.

The shadow immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, told commercial radio on Friday that “it costs Australia around about just under $13m every time a boat turns up in Australia. Taking the preventative action and giving the federal police, the Indonesian national police or as well as over in other countries, this option to be able to go and get that boat and go and take it out and scuttle it and take it out of the hands of people smugglers is just another way.”

Tony Abbott unveils Indonesian boat buy-back scheme | World news | theguardian.com