Another Abbott idea that's peeing the Indonesians off.
Abbott's asylum seeker transit plan raises suspicions in JakartaMichael Bachelard, David Wroe
Tony Abbott, Australia's prime minister-elect, gestures as he speaks during a news conference at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on Monday, Sept. 16, 2013. Abbott announced his Cabinet team to see through the coalition government’s first-term pledges, attracting criticism for including just one female member.
A largely overlooked element of the Abbott government's people-smuggling policy involving asylum-seeker ''transit ports'' on Indonesian soil has emerged as the latest lightning rod for anger in Jakarta.
The $198 million plan to set up asylum-seeker terminals in Indonesian ports and elsewhere in the region has also met with criticism from a top international law expert, who says it would raise more legal questions than other controversial parts of the Coalition's policy.
Under the plan, the government says it would set up the terminals ''subject to the agreement of our regional partners'', then lease ''a fleet of fast transfer vessels'' to carry asylum seekers there from mid-ocean, so that they never enter Australian waters.
Officials would conduct health checks on the ship or at the port, and the smuggled people would be taken to nearby airports for charter flights direct to Nauru and Manus Island.
But the plan threatens to escalate tensions between Canberra and Jakarta over the issue.
Indonesian officials contacted last week said they were not aware of the proposal. When it was explained to Mahfudz Siddiq, chairman of the Indonesian Parliament's Commission I, which oversees foreign affairs, he said he thought it would be ''intervening in other countries' sovereignty''.
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