"unsubstantiated reports from illegal boat people now taken as fact by Labor, Greens and the Media"
THE Abbott government is under pressure to respond to reports that Australian navy personnel fired shots as part of an operation to turn around a boat carrying asylum-seekers from Indonesia.
"The Australian people deserve to know what's going on here,'' Labor frontbencher Chris Bowen told ABC radio, as he called for more information from Immigration Minister Scott Morrison.
The reports came as Indonesia's Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa described as a "slippery slope'' Australia's purchase of lifeboats for border operations, amid speculation they'll be used to send back asylum-seekers.
In the latest alleged turn-back by Australia, a local police commissioner from southern Java told Fairfax Media that villagers plucked a number of asylum-seekers from the water on January 8 after their apparently unseaworthy boat was sent back by Australia.
After speaking to those on board the boat, the officer said the navy had "shot into the air just to scare them''.
"The boat hadn't reached Australia - they were still at sea but they said they could already see Christmas Island,'' said the officer, who did not want to be named.
"But they said the Australian navy then drove them away and escorted them until they entered Indonesian waters again.''
The boat had been carrying 25 people - including four children - from Bangladesh and Myanmar and two Indonesian crew.
Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said every day there were more concerning reports of actions taken on the high seas.
"The possibility of shots being fired is really alarming,'' she told ABC radio.
Meanwhile, Dr Natalegawa has questioned whether Australia could be going further than turning boats back, by potentially facilitating the movement of asylum-seekers.
He was responding to the federal government's admission that lifeboats have been bought - reportedly to send asylum-seekers back to Indonesia.
"Developments of the type that has been reported in the media, namely the facilitation by way of boats, this is the kind of slippery slope that we have identified in the past,'' Dr Natalegawa said.
While confirming the lifeboats have been bought, Operation Sovereign Borders commander Angus Campbell, would not say how they would be used.
