Jakarta Globe – AFP, May 14, 2014
Canberra. Australia will spend Aus$86.8 million (US$81 million) over the next three years to help Indonesia manage its asylum-seeker population, budget papers revealed Tuesday.
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| Indonesian officials check a lifeboat stranded on Karang Jambe beach, in Kebumen, Central Java, on Feb. 25, 2014. (EPA Photo/Himawan Nugraha) |
Canberra. Australia will spend Aus$86.8 million (US$81 million) over the next three years to help Indonesia manage its asylum-seeker population, budget papers revealed Tuesday.
Canberra
said the money would be used to fund regional cooperation arrangements with its
neighbor.
The
Australian government will also spend Aus$3.7 million in 2014-15 for
“international engagement activities to prevent and disrupt maritime
people-smuggling”.
“Australian
Customs and Border Protection Service officials will be stationed in Indonesia,
Malaysia and Sri Lanka to coordinate Commonwealth [Australian] agency efforts
to sustain the prevention of maritime people-smuggling,” the papers stated.
Australia
will also donate two retired Bay-class vessels to Malaysia from 2015/16 to
assist regional efforts to combat the people-smuggling scourge.
Canberra’s
reforms to immigration policy are expected to reap economic benefits, with
savings of Aus$2.5 billion projected over five years because fewer boat-people
are coming.
The number
of boats arriving in Australia has dried up under the government’s tough policy
of turning boats back to Indonesia and denying would-be refugees resettlement
in Australia by sending them to Papua New Guinea and Nauru.
No
asylum-seekers have arrived by boat in Australia so far this year, allowing the
government to announce that several immigration detention centers will be
closed.
“This
sustained successful prevention of further illegal boat arrivals will see the
cost to the budget reduce by $2.5 billion this year and over forward
estimates,” said Immigration Minister Scott Morrison.
As already
announced, a new Australian Border Force will be established by merging Customs
and Immigration Department operations, funded in part through efficiency
savings.
Australia’s
overall migration intake will remain at 190,000 in the 2014/15 financial year,
the budget said.
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