Indonesia’s vice-president has said that if Australia “bribed” people smugglers to turn back, it could be considered a party to trafficking amid warnings that news of the alleged payments could entice even more people to make dangerous journeys between the two countries

Jakarta also demanded Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, retract her “inappropriate” statement that Indonesia is to blame for failing to secure its borders in the first place.

The Australian government is refusing to confirm or deny allegations that US$30,000 ($39,000) was paid to six people smugglers who were intercepted at sea to return asylum seekers to Indonesia in May.



Indonesia’s vice president, Jusuf Kalla, was quoted as saying Australia would be acting like a smuggler if the allegations proved to be correct.



“It was bribing, right?” he told reporters in Jakarta on Monday, as quoted by local website detik.com.

“People who bribe, that is already wrong ... Wow, a state bribing, that certainly doesn’t fit with the correct ethics in state relations.”

Bishop joined the prime minister, Tony Abbott, and immigration minister, Peter Dutton, in refusing to rule out the practice when asked directly in question time in Canberra on Monday. Legal experts said the payments could be in breach of Australian domestic laws relating to people smuggling.

Bishop sparked renewed diplomatic tension on Monday by saying that Australia’s hardline operation to turn back asylum-seeker boats was necessary “because Indonesian boats with Indonesian crews are leaving Indonesia with the express intention of breaching our sovereignty”. She urged Indonesia “to enforce sovereignty over its borders”.

Agus Barnas, a spokesman for Indonesia’s security ministry, said Bishop’s comment was “not an appropriate statement for her to make [and] she should withdraw it”.

“Her accusation is only going to further complicate the Indonesia-Australia bilateral relations and our cooperation to tackle the boat-people issue,” Barnas told the Guardian.



“Please do not muddy the waters even further ... Australia should go back to the UN process and uphold its responsibility under the refugee convention.”

Barnas issued a pointed warning to the Australian government about the consequences of paying crews of boats to return to Indonesia.

“If the allegation that Australia paid people smugglers is proven true, it will encourage more people smugglers to go there. This is very regrettable,” Barnas said.



“Indonesia has done all it can on this issue. If we have not prevented the boats to go there, there would have been an influx of thousands of migrants to Australia.”

Indonesia had already launched an investigation into allegations that an Australian official paid US$5,000 each to the captain and five crew members of an intercepted boat carrying about 65 asylum seekers from Bangladesh, Burma and Sri Lanka, apparently en route to New Zealand.







The UNHCR said migrants rescued off Indonesia last month told the agency that payments were allegedly made to people smugglers.

“Our team in Indonesia has interviewed passengers who say that while at sea the Indonesian crew was taken by the Australian authorities to another boat for a few hours and returned to the original boat talking about payment,” UNHCR’s Bangkok-based regional spokeswoman Vivian Tan said. “I’m not aware of such allegations in the past,” she added.

Over the weekend, the Indonesian foreign minister, Retno Marsudi, ordered an explanation from the Australian ambassador, Paul Grigson, about the allegations. Grigson had returned to Jakarta only days earlier, having been recalled to Canberra in protest at Indonesia’s execution of two Australians for drug-smuggling offences.



In parliament in Canberra on Monday, Bishop and Dutton did not repeat their previous firm denials that payments had occurred, instead invoking the government’s policy of not commenting on operational matters to avoid answering direct questions.



Abbott, too, refused to rule out the practice. The prime minister said the government did “not feel the need to broadcast our intentions and our tactics to our enemies” or to “big-note itself in public, if the only beneficiaries are our enemies”.

“The only thing that really counts is that this government has stopped the boats and we have done so in a way which is consistent with our position as a decent and humane country because the most decent and humane thing you can do is stop the boats which is exactly what we have done,” he told the House of Representatives.

The attorney general, George Brandis, told the Senate on Monday that the Australian government had acted “within the law”.



George Brandis defended the Australian government’s actions on Monday. Link to video.

The Australian Greens have written to the Australian federal police asking it to investigate whether any laws were broken, while Labor has asked the auditor general to examine the spending of public money.



Phillip Boulten SC, a leading Sydney barrister, and Nicholas Cowdery, a former director of public prosecutions in New South Wales, told Guardian Australia that an Australian paying people smugglers would likely be in breach of the provisions of the criminal code outlawing people smuggling or assisting people smuggling.



But both pointed to the fact that the government itself would have to initiate and investigate any charges.

“On the face of it someone who pays thousands of dollars to an Indonesian mariner to take refugees back to Indonesia so as to breach Indonesian laws of entry may be breaching the criminal code,” Boulten said – including section 73(1), which makes people smuggling an offence, 73(3) dealing with aggravated people smuggling or 73.3A (supporting the offence of people smuggling).

But no such prosecution could be undertaken without the consent of Brandis, Boulten said, and it could be possible for any person who paid smugglers to use as a defence the fact that they were acting to uphold a separate Australian law.