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April 11th, 2013 
The New Zealand flag flies from the boat carrying Sri Lankan asylum seekers. Picture: Graeme Gibbons
Source: News Limited
HOME Affairs Minister Jason Clare says border protection authorities have confirmed a group of asylum-seekers who arrived on the Australian mainland this week were trying to get to New Zealand.
Speaking this morning Mr Clare also said if any of the 66 passengers on board the vessel that arrived in Geraldton in WA on Tuesday were found not to have a genuine asylum claim they would be immediately flown back to Sri Lanka.
It came as the Coalition confirmed it would pursue a plan to spend around $1.5 billion securing unmanned drones to patrol Australia’s borders if elected in September.
Mr Clare this morning said authorities had made progress in their investigations as to how the asylum-seeker boat arrived on the mainland.
“I spoke to Border Protection again this morning. They’ve started now to interview people on the boat and the initial advice to us indicates that they were trying to get to New Zealand, not Australia,” Mr Clare told the Seven Network’s Sunrise program.
“So that helps to explain the route the people took from Sri Lanka to Geraldton.”
Asylum-seekers on Tuesday were seen holding signs that read: “We want to go to New Zealand. Please help us.”
Mr Clare said the “message was clear” if people were not genuine refugees they would be returned to Sri Lanka.
“One of the most successful things we have done in the past few months is flown people back to Sri Lanka,” he said.
“The prospect of drowning hasn’t put people off but the risk of being flown home in a couple of days has stopped people coming to Australia.”
Mr Clare was backed by Immigration Minister Brendan O’Connor who this morning said while he “sympathised” with people who made a long and desperate journey to Australia, returns would occur if necessary.
“We are not looking to make an example of them … but our policies must deter people from getting on these unseaworthy vessels,” he told ABC radio.
Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner Admiral Thisara Samarasinghe yesterday called on the government to immediately return the arrivals back to Colombo as the Sri Lankan navy’s operations commander N Attygalle reportedly warned of an influx of asylum-seekers trying to reach Australia.
Tuesday’s vessel was the first to reach the Australian mainland in five years and was one of the 76 boats carrying 4616 asylum-seekers to make it into Australian waters this year.
Opposition defence spokesman David Johnston this morning said if elected the Coalition would seek to have unmanned drones patrolling Australia’s waters by 2017-2018.
He said there would be “two in the air at any one time” and Australia would seek to have a fleet of seven in total at a cost of around $1.5 billion.
Information from the drones would be used to “direct surface assets precisely and accurately to intercept” asylum boats.
“It gives us a huge capability,” Senator Johnston told ABC radio.
But Australian Greens Leader Christine Milne has dismissed a coalition’s drone plan as one of a number of “weird and wonderful” ideas being floated before the federal election in September.
“I think we’re going to see all kinds of weird and wonderful propositions come out in terms of trying to beat up a debate leading into the election,” she told reporters in Canberra.
“We’re going to see a lot of propositions either put out there or debated for base political reasons, not because they’re ever likely to happen.”
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