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HARD-LINE Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton pledged to repatriate 15 Vietnamese asylum-seekers yesterday after their boat became the first in over four years to reach Australia.
The Australian navy has virtually choked off the arrival of refugees by sea, intercepting their boats and sending them to immigration camps in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.
The minister acknowledged that a group of people recently arrived in north-east Australia on a fishing boat from Vietnam, which he blamed on a failure of surveillance.
"We will work with the agencies to make sure we can repatriate these people back to their country of origin, once we understand the facts of the matter,” said Mr Dutton.
However, new concerns were raised yesterday about the psychological state of children who arrived earlier and were banished by the government.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that asylum-seeker children on Nauru are deliberately harming themselves and researching ways to die.
