Immigration department considered using Australian customs vessels as 'motherships' to process claims as early as 2012, former official reveals

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

The immigration department considered using Australian customs vessels as “motherships” to interview and process asylum seekers as early as 2012 but was advised the process could be unlawful, according to a former department officer.



The revelation follows a report by Fairfax Media on Wednesday that asylum seekers on board one of two boats believed to have been trying to reach Australia in the past week were taken aboard the Australian customs vessel Triton at the weekend and subjected to a screening process via teleconference.

Whether or not this turns out to be correct, the department has previously considered plans to interview and screen asylum seekers on board the customs Ocean Protector and the Triton, according to the former immigration department officer, Greg Lake.

Lake, a former senior immigration department official, told Guardian Australia on Wednesday that the department had “road tested” plans to use Australian customs boats the Ocean Protector and Triton as venues to conduct refugee interviews.

“The department has previously considered a mothership model where people are screened out or interviewed on-water – using enhanced screening, for example – before being taken either back to their home country or to Manus or Nauru,” Lake said.

He said the plans – which would mean asylum seekers would never be taken to any part of Australia, including Christmas Island – had been at the stage where they were ready to be implemented, but were stopped owing to legal advice the department received.

“The reason it didn’t happen is the senior counsel for the department advised it was not legal to hold a person in a mothership situation, because when you detain a person your primary reason for detention has to be to take them to a detention facility. We couldn’t justify sitting them in a mothership.”

A spokesman for the immigration minister, Scott Morrison, said in response to the claims by Fairfax Media that “in accordance with the policy established by the Operation Sovereign Borders joint agency taskforce commander, the government does not comment on speculation or reporting regarding on-water operations”.

The minister’s office has not responded to Guardian Australia’s further questions about the earlier advice received by the department to interview asylum seekers on customs vessels.

Late on Wednesday the Human Rights Law Centre in Melbourne sent an urgent request for action to the UN high commissioner for human rights.

The letter, seen by Guardian Australia, urges the commissioner to intervene and request Australia disclose the whereabouts of the asylum seekers on board the boats, refrain from returning them to Sri Lanka, and allow them to lodge a protection application in the presence of a lawyer.

"You can’t just deliver 200 people straight back into the hands of those they claim to be fleeing,” said Daniel Webb, director of legal advocacy at the centre.

“Doing so would be a clear breach of international law. We’re asking the UN special rapporteur on torture to take urgent action to stop this from happening.”



The mothership screening process would be a way to “triage” asylum seekers who may have genuine claims and to allow for the immediate deportation of those who are screened out and found not to have genuine claims.

The Australian director of Human Rights Watch Australia, Elaine Pearson, said if the Fairfax report was confirmed the risks to asylum seekers who might be returned were grave.

“If Australia is conducting enhanced screening on-board and handing people over to the Sri Lankan authorities after only a cursory interview, this is extremely disturbing and probably unlawful under the refugee convention.

“Especially given Sri Lanka’s record of repression and abuses, it is entirely inappropriate to hand over people who may have legitimate asylum claims over to Sri Lankan forces.

“The Australian government’s attitude of “what happens at sea, stays at sea” has to end – it’s time for the government to be more open and transparent about what is going on.”

In the absence of guidance from the immigration department, confusion has swirled for days over the fate of the two vessels, if indeed there do turn out to be two vessels and not one, and whether the Sri Lankan navy are now involved.

The Australian reported on Wednesday that there were plans for asylum seekers from one of the vessels to be transferred to the Sri Lankan military.

But Commodore Kosala Warnakulasuriya, a spokesman for the Sri Lankan navy who was quoted in the Australian’s report, told Guardian Australia no vessel had been dispatched to conduct a transfer.

“No, I don’t have any sort of official information to make a confirmation of that,” he said. “Nothing has been sent to our office about any official report about any sort of captured refugees in Australia.”

The Sri Lankan high commissioner in Australia, Admiral Thisara Samarasinghe, told Guardian Australia on Wednesday he had received “no notification” of any Sri Lankan naval vessel being engaged.

The Indian high commissioner Biren Nanda told Guardian Australia in response to questions about the vessel: “We have no information. When there is a consulate issue affecting India, we receive information. All we know is what we have seen in media reports.

“We have not received any official information about this case. I’m unable to comment on what we might do in the circumstances.”

On Wednesday Labor and the Greens called on Tony Abbott to provide details on the fate of asylum seekers on board both boats.

“Australians deserve to know exactly how low our government is prepared to go for their domestic political mantra and just how cruel they’re prepared to be to people, and just how far they’re prepared to trash Australia’s reputation in international circles,” the Greens leader, Senator Christine Milne, said.