Asylum seeker boat spotted off west Australia: reports

MELBOURNE, Australia

 A boat suspected to be carrying asylum seekers has been spotted off northwest Australia, according to local media Monday.

ABC News cited an unnamed source from the federal government as confirming that a boat was sighted off Dampier in Western Australia's North West region, and would be intercepted.

The government of Prime Minister Tony Abbott was elected in 2013 after pledging to "stop the boats" of migrants and asylum-seekers trying to enter the country. It has a controversial policy of using offshore detention centers in Nauru and Papua New Guinea to process asylum seekers who arrive by sea on boats. 

An operations manager for oil and gas sector contractor MODEC told The Australian on Monday that workers on an oil production vessel had seen a “small wooden boat” with a “large number of people on board” around 1500 kilometers (932 miles) north of Perth

“It was quite close, certainly [workers] could see the people on it quite clearly,” Gary Kennedy said.

“There was quite a large number of people on board, we’re not sure how many, the people seem to be in good health and high spirits and there was a lot of waving going on but there was no direct communications between the crew and the actual boat itself,” he added.

After workers on the oil production vessel informed authorities, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority responded to the case.

The ABC reported that it understands those on board could be from Vietnam.

The sighting is the first near Australia’s shores in almost two years, after a vessel carrying 17 Vietnamese asylum seekers arrived at a platform 200 kilometers off Dampier in July 2013, before being sent to Christmas Island.

The opposition Greens have criticized the government over its unwillingness to address the boat's arrival in detail.

"There's no justification for the [immigration] minister and the department to keep the Australian people and the Australian Parliament in the dark," ABC quoted Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young as saying.

"Be upfront about what has occurred here, and just have the guts to tell the Australian people what indeed is going on at our borders," she added.

Meanwhile, Western Australia Premier Colin Barnett said that the state’s police were investigating the matter until a Commonwealth naval vessel responded.

"This boat while I think it's approaching our coast is still well offshore and it's under surveillance," he said. "I think the Abbott Government is doing an enormous amount and has stopped the arrival of boats."

Australia’s asylum-seeker policies have drawn criticism from human rights groups.

Last September, Australian and Cambodian officials signed a AU$40 million ($32 million) deal to resettle only genuine refugees, not asylum seekers, who volunteer in the Southeast Asian country. 

So far only four refugees -- a Muslim Rohingya man, an Iranian man and an Iranian couple – have been transferred under the agreement. An additional AU$15.5 million was spent on the resettlement of the four in early June.