Australia PNG joint border patrol

Australia PNG joint border patrol

Australia Network's Pacific correspondent Sean Dorney, a former veteran Papua New Guinea correspondent, has just been back to PNG - to a village he has never visited before.

Sean was invited to be part of a joint patrol to Sigabaduru village involving Australian Customs, Australian Federal Police (AFP), Queensland Police, Papua New Guinea Customs, PNG Immigration and PNG Police.

Here's his account of the journey:

The village of Sigabaduru is on the southern coast of Papua New Guinea's Western (or Fly River) Province and is less than three kilometres from the Australian island of Saibai. We went there in quite speedy tenders launched from a patrol boat, the Australian Customs Vessel Holdfast Bay. Unlike Saibai which has a wharf, electricity and running water, Sigabaduru - a village of 850 to 1,000 people - has no electricity, no running water and no wharf. That meant wading ashore.

Once on the beach Grant Smith, the Australian Federal Police officer who was in the team, handed over his gun to his PNG counterpart, a policewoman who held it until he was ready to return to Australian territory.

Sigabaduru is one of the villages covered by the Australia PNG Treaty whereby PNG citizens are allowed traditional entry into a number of Australian islands in the Torres Strait, free from the need for visas.

About 50,000 visits are made to Australian islands like Saibai each year by Papua New Guineans covered by the Treaty. In fact, the day before we crossed over to Sigabaduru I ran into one of the men from that village, Nope Nama, who was on a shopping trip to the supermarket at another Australian island just off the PNG mainland, Dauan. He bought some rice, flour, sugar and fruit juice. He was back on the PNG mainland before nightfall.

The idea of the joint cross border patrols is to maintain relationships with the communities and the trips provide the authorities in both Australia and PNG with invaluable intelligence. The local people on both sides of the border know each other extremely well and so the Torres Strait is not the easy access route to Australia by potential asylum seekers or others that one might assume.

Liam Daly, the Australian Customs and Border Security team leader for the Torres Strait, told a village meeting in Sigabaduru that the Australian agencies involved in the patrol had a variety of interests.

"We're interested into [sic] the movement of people into Australia, the movement of people out of Australia," he said. "Things like drugs, guns, money movement - that kind of stuff."

The AFP's Grant Smith told the people how much Australia had appreciated information Papua New Guineans had provided in the past.

"I just want to say we really value the relationship we've established with your village here," he said.

"And because we're so close. PNG and Australia are so close here these Cross Border Patrols which are led by Customs, it's really about us working together across that border so that both communities are safe."

There was one complaint from the other side. Koeget Salee, a retired school teacher from Sigabaduru, said that his people had assisted in reporting people trying to illegally enter Australia - but it was expensive for people in PNG to do so. He said that if he was reporting some suspicious movement to Saibai, he had to make an international phone call on his mobile even though Saibai was in full view just there across the water.

One issue that I reported on quite extensively when I was the ABC's Port Moresby correspondent in the 1990s was the trade of guns from Australian to the Torres Strait and marijuana from the PNG side. Although there was mention of it during the Sigabaduru village meeting, it appears the trade has declined somewhat. One of the reasons, I was told, is that hydroponic marijuana grown in Australia has taken market share off the PNG Highlands grown variety.

I asked the Queensland Police officer in charge in the Torres Strait Patrol Group about the trade.

"I wouldn't say that it doesn't occur," Inspector David Lacey said.

"Certainly our intelligence indicates that it is not as prevalent as perhaps it was in the past. I think one of the reasons is our continued cross border patrols with our federal counterparts.

"We have a very good connection of networks on the islands these days with the Movement Monitoring Officers employed by the Federal Government attached to each of the outer islands.

"Also we have Torres Strait Islands Police Support Officers currently on the islands so that network of contacts, I think, significantly reduces the amount of activity that goes on, specifically with regards to large-scale importations."

Inspector Lacey said a big part of the Queensland Police job in the Torres Strait these days is to do with search and rescue operations because the waters on both sides of the border can be quite treacherous.