The opposition Labor Party sparked political uproar yesterday by questioning whether Australian police had sabotaged boats carrying asylum seekers from Indonesia to Australia.
In a speech to Parliament, Labor's Senate leader, John Faulkner, demanded to know whether the government had authorised the deliberate sabotage of vessels, including a boat which Australian authorities code-named Siev X.
More than 350 asylum seekers drowned last October after Siev X sank en route from Java to Christmas Island, an Australian territory which lies hundreds of kilometres off the coast of Western Australia.
Senator Faulkner said the issue of sabotage had been raised by a former police informant, Kevin Enniss, who has claimed that on four or five occasions he paid Indonesian locals to scuttle people-smuggling boats.
Last year police paid Mr Enniss, an Australian citizen living in West Timor, A$250,000 (HK$1 million) over a period of several months in return for intelligence on the illegal transit of refugees.
In February a television current affairs programme alleged that Mr Enniss was engaged in people-smuggling operations of his own at the same time as divulging information to authorities.