Possible refugee boat spotted off WA coast

The Abbott government introduced the bright orange life rafts in 2014 in a controversial move to stem the flow of asylum boats making it to Australian shores.

The ABC reported floating mining supply company Modec confirmed their staff have sighted what appears to be an asylum seeker boat off Dampier.

A Modec spokesman said “a large number of people” appeared to be on the boat.

The police boat returned to Dampier about midnight and an Australian Navy vessel is understood to be escorting the boat out of Australian waters.

The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, has also refused to comment.

A boatload of Vietnamese asylum seekers sits somewhere off the coast of Western Australia, having succeeded in penetrating Australia’s recently reinforced strict border regime.

“There’s been this rise in persecutions of [Catholic] believers and following there is this exodus of young Catholics from Vietnam which we are calling a second wave”, Ms Martin-Iverson said.

“We do not comment on operational matters on the water”, he told reporters in Canberra when asked whether his government was negotiating with Vietnam to return the boat.

In June, reports that Australia paid people-smugglers bound for Australia thousands of dollars to turn their boat back to Indonesia caused tensions with Jakarta, plunging relations to their lowest point in more than a year.

Abbott defended his policies, under which any asylum-seekers who do arrive on unauthorised boats are denied resettlement in the country and sent instead to camps at Nauru or Papua New Guinea in the Pacific.

“Discussions are happening now”, Rintoul said.

“

If any, by hook or by crook, actually get here, they will never get permanent residency in this country”,

Abbott said.

Refugee Action Coalition co-ordinator Ian Rintoul told the Sydney Morning Herald the people on board should be brought ashore and allowed to apply for asylum.

“As long as anyone thinks that by coming here by boat, they will get the great prize of permanent residency here in Australia, the evil, dangerous, deadly trade of people smuggling will continue”.