People-smugglers are struggling to stay in business: Angus Campbell

Lieutenant General Angus Campbell told a Senate committee today of one asylum-seeker who wanted to go to New Zealand who was told he’d reached Australia, after their boat ran aground in Indonesia.

General Campbell, the head of Operation Sovereign Borders, said smugglers used to be able to tell clients “give me all your money and I will get you to Australia” but that is no longer the case.

“Smugglers are being forced to resort to even greater depths of dishonesty in their struggle to remain in business,” he told the committee.

He told the story of a man apprehended in Indonesia after a smuggler promised to get him to New Zealand.

“When their boat ran aground, the client was told they had arrived in Australia. In reality they had merely come ashore elsewhere in the Indonesian archipelago,” he told the inquiry.

General Campbell said it was now six months since a people-smuggling had venture reached Australia and no ventures had departed Indonesia since early May. There had been no known deaths at sea since December 9.

“From mid-December 2013 as an additional measure we have turned back boats where it is safe to do so,” he said.

But he warned that people-smugglers were resilient criminals who would exploit any easing of Australian border security measures to resume their trade.

The committee is seeking information about the unrest in February at the Manus Island detention centre in Papua New Guinea.

But Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young also wanted to know about 153 LTTE Tamil asylum-seekers who are aboard an Australian Customs vessel Indian Ocean after being intercepted en route to Australia from India. Their fate is currently the subject of High Court action.