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SYDNEY (AFP) – A fishing vessel carrying 45 boatpeople landed on a remote Australian island Wednesday, a day after the opposition party said a softer stance on refugees had prompted a "surge" in illegal immigrants.
Residents of Christmas Island, 2,600 kilometres (1,612 miles) northwest of Australia's mainland, said the Indonesian-flagged boat reached shore just before dawn, bypassing an Australian navy ship to moor at the island's jetty.
"The group did not arrive on the mainland and will be detained to undergo health, security and other checks to establish their identity and reasons for their voyage," said Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus.
The island is home to an offshore detention centre for illegal entrants and asylum seekers, and the navy ship was holding 63 boatpeople on board who were picked up last Thursday, according to Australian Associated Press (AAP).
"It's particularly worrying when you think, the navy boat, with all their high technology, allowed this refugee boat to drive past them," said island resident Steve Watson.
"There they were, they'd just walked off their boat, they were on Australian soil," Watson told AAP.
He said the group included men, women and children, and were believed to be from Iraq.
Debus said 45 people had been taken from the ship for processing in the island's detention facility, bringing to 158 the total number of asylum-seekers to reach Australia's shores in three boats over the past week.
More than 230 people have been caught since January, compared with 179 intercepted in the whole of 2008, prompting Australia's conservative opposition to blame a softening of refugee policy for a surge in arrivals.
But the Greens party said the centre-left Labor government had done the right thing by last year scrapping the old system, which was widely criticised for leaving asylum seekers, including children, locked up for years.
"These are a tiny handful of people relative to our overall migrant intake so I don't think we need to be concerned that we're becoming a soft touch," said Greens Senator Scott Ludlam.
Labor scrapped the previous government's so-called "Pacific Solution," under which boat people were sent to special detention centres on the tiny island nation of Nauru or the Papua New Guinea island of Manus.
Asylum-seekers arriving by boat are still held on Christmas Island, but their claims must be expedited, with six-monthly case reviews by an ombudsman now government policy.
Residents of Christmas Island, 2,600 kilometres (1,612 miles) northwest of Australia's mainland, said the Indonesian-flagged boat reached shore just before dawn, bypassing an Australian navy ship to moor at the island's jetty.
"The group did not arrive on the mainland and will be detained to undergo health, security and other checks to establish their identity and reasons for their voyage," said Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus.
The island is home to an offshore detention centre for illegal entrants and asylum seekers, and the navy ship was holding 63 boatpeople on board who were picked up last Thursday, according to Australian Associated Press (AAP).
"It's particularly worrying when you think, the navy boat, with all their high technology, allowed this refugee boat to drive past them," said island resident Steve Watson.
"There they were, they'd just walked off their boat, they were on Australian soil," Watson told AAP.
He said the group included men, women and children, and were believed to be from Iraq.
Debus said 45 people had been taken from the ship for processing in the island's detention facility, bringing to 158 the total number of asylum-seekers to reach Australia's shores in three boats over the past week.
More than 230 people have been caught since January, compared with 179 intercepted in the whole of 2008, prompting Australia's conservative opposition to blame a softening of refugee policy for a surge in arrivals.
But the Greens party said the centre-left Labor government had done the right thing by last year scrapping the old system, which was widely criticised for leaving asylum seekers, including children, locked up for years.
"These are a tiny handful of people relative to our overall migrant intake so I don't think we need to be concerned that we're becoming a soft touch," said Greens Senator Scott Ludlam.
Labor scrapped the previous government's so-called "Pacific Solution," under which boat people were sent to special detention centres on the tiny island nation of Nauru or the Papua New Guinea island of Manus.
Asylum-seekers arriving by boat are still held on Christmas Island, but their claims must be expedited, with six-monthly case reviews by an ombudsman now government policy.
