The shire president of Christmas Island has slammed “secrecy” surrounding the reported arrival of 20 Sri Lankan asylum seekers last week, saying local authorities were kept in the dark about their whereabouts.
The Department of Home Affairs and the deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, confirmed on Thursday that authorities intercepted a boat carrying 20 people near the island off Western Australia’s north-west coast last week.
The Australian reported the group spent “a few days” in detention on Christmas Island while health and security checks were carried out before having their asylum claims rejected and being returned to Sri Lanka on a government charter jet on Wednesday.
But the Christmas Island shire president, Gordon Thomson, told Guardian Australia he had not been aware of the arrival of any asylum seekers on the island, and accused the government of operating “in a sinister state of secrecy”.
Shire officials on Christmas Island have regular intergovernmental agency meetings, and Thomson said at the most recent one a week ago an Australian Border Force official did not mention the arrival of any asylum seekers.
“We have had no advice about anybody in the detention centre on … the facts are not being explained about the process and we are being left to surmise what happened,” he told Guardian Australia.
On Thursday, the home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, told Sydney radio station 2GB that the asylum seekers had not been “detained” on the island.
“The vessel in question didn’t make it to Christmas Island … there was a suggestion that people were detained on Christmas Island in the immigration detention centre. That’s not the case either,” he said.
Those comments led Thomson to believe the government may have held the Sri Lankans offshore while their asylum claims were processed, before flying them out of Christmas Island.
“I understand that an aeroplane came in at about 1.30am on Wednesday morning this week [and] took off in the early hours of the morning,” he said.
“As I say, I can only surmise what happened given what we’re getting out of the government that they weren’t processed on the island.”
Guardian Australia spoke to a Christmas Island resident who reported seeing an unusual amount of traffic around the airport in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
The resident, who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity, said he was driving close to the airport at about 1.15am on Wednesday when he saw a “convoy” of SUVs driving away from the Christmas Island airport.
“Besides some local kids smoking pot, it’s unusual to see anyone around at that time,” the resident said.
“It’s unusual to see that many cars during the daytime, let alone in the middle of the night. I remember thinking ‘I wonder what they are all doing here’. It was something like half-a-dozen vehicles driving in a sort of convoy.”
The new Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, has demanded a security briefing from Scott Morrison following the boat’s arrival.
