9th May 2014 10:26
Sydney (Alliance News) - Immigration and Customs will merge into a new Australian Border Force that will have a leader of equal standing to those in charge of intelligence, the national police and the armed forces, officials said Friday.
The force will have a commissioner answerable to the minister of immigration in a re-organization that reflects the success of the military-style operation that has kept out seaborne asylum-seekers for five months.
Announcing "sweeping new changes" to border protection arrangements, Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said the mega-agency would have its own training college and a fleet of new patrol boats.
"This is the fifth consecutive month during which there hasn't been a single successful maritime people-smuggling venture to Australia," Morrison said in an address to a Sydney think tank.
Under Operation Sovereign Borders, instituted when Prime Minister Tony Abbott's conservatives took office after the September election, all maritime arrivals are packed off to offshore immigration processing centres in Nauru and Papua New Guinea and offered the alternative of flying home or being settled there.
There have also been asylum-seeker boats turned back to Indonesia.
"We're turning back boats where it's safe to do so," Morrison said.
Copyright dpa
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