Peter Dutton warns of 14,000 asylum seekers waiting to come

HOME Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has issued an extraordinary warning that 14,000 asylum seekers are lined up waiting to come to Australia after the first illegal boat arrival in four years.

• Asylum seekers on run in the Daintree
• Fishermen save illegal immigrants

HOME Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has issued an extraordinary warning that 14,000 asylum seekers are lined up waiting to come to Australia after the first illegal boat arrival in four years north of Cairns.

Authorities refuse to confirm how many more Vietnam ese boat people are on the run – thought to be at least two – after a foreign fishing trawler sank near Cape Kimberley, north of Cairns early Sunday.

The abandoned fishing boat that brought the asylum seekers. Picture: AFP/Port Douglas Marine Rescue

Australian Border Force has come under intense criticism for the unexplained breach in the so-called “ring of steel” around “Fortress Australia”.

New PM Scott Morrison – who initially oversaw the ­nation’s Stop the Boats operation – has been left red-faced by the disturbing breach.

Last night, an unmarked white jumbo left Cairns airport to fly the group direct to Darwin detention centre for repatriation back to Vietnam.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton confirmed the boat that ran aground in far-north Queensland was “the first people-smuggling venture” in more than 1400 days.

“Clearly there’s been a failing when surveillance has not worked as it should,’’ Mr Dutton said.

A captured Vietnamese asylum seeker in the back of a police van at Cape Kimberley. Picture: Marc McCormack

“People smugglers have not and will never go out of business. They look to ­people as just another commodity, they can move drugs, they can move guns. We know that there are 14,000 people in Indonesia waiting to get on to boats, now.”

He said the would-be ­migrants would be deported “as quickly as possible … once we understand all the facts”.

“We have been very clear that we won’t allow people who arrive illegally to settle in this country,” Mr Dutton said.

The Courier-Mail yesterday exclusively broke the story with images of nine of the illegal immigrants, in good health and dressed as tourists, on the beach at Cape Kimberley, 12km north of Port Douglas. Locals said the sunken vessel appeared to have enough diesel, food and water supplies onboard to travel as far south as Sydney.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk was in Cairns yesterday to be briefed by Queensland Police on the situation, and mused whether the boat’s arrival was somehow made possible by the federal leadership spill.

Mackerel fisherman Colin Patterson, who towed the stricken trawler leaking oil and diesel to deeper water, said it was “not an ordinary Indonesian fishing boat”.

“It had not been used for fishing for some time,” he said.

It is understood the trawler approached the coast under the cloak of darkness before it was first found by locals about 6.30am, but it took authorities almost five hours to respond.

Initial reports suggested up to 30 people fled into mangroves, but sources now say it was closer to 17 – with the skipper and first mate still hiding in the scrub. Officials are understood to be going through detainees’ mobile phones.