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Southern media has published and broadcast numerous articles in recent weeks about the strategies to prevent refugees, particularly West Papuans, from reaching our shores.

Information filtering into the Torres News indicates the increased activity has started already.

The Adelaide Advertiser reports the Howard Government will use submarines, warships, spy planes and top-secret radar and satellites to stop West Papuan refugees from reaching Australia.

In a multi-agency strategy, the military will work with Customs, Coastwatch and Fisheries to target illegal fishermen as well as would-be refugees. The massive new surveillance effort will be led by Customs vessels diverted from drug interdiction operations in southern Australia and RAAF P-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft.

The Advertiser reports Navy patrol boats will relieve Customs vessels on drugs watch. The Orions will operate from the RAAF base at Darwin airport and will mount round-the-clock patrols of the waters between West Papua and Australia.The four-engine aircraft can spend up to 12 hours in the air and cover thousands of square kilometres of ocean, and are regarded as the most effective weapon against wooden vessels in the open sea.

The Advertiser quotes one government official as saying: "We will pick up anything illegal."

The surveillance effort will cost tens of millions of dollars and will run indefinitely.

The boats and planes will be supported by Darwin-based navy patrol boats and larger warships, including frigates, that will be diverted to the West Papua border area from exercises and en-route to operational deployments.

Collins class submarines will use top-secret surveillance capabilities to hunt refugee boats and poachers in waters off the West Papuan coast. The final element of the new strategy will be joint patrols with the Indonesian navy, The Advertiser reported.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports the federal government has announced it is extending its 2001 Pacific Solution following a rift with Indonesia over the decision to grant temporary protection visas to 42 Papuans last month.

Under the changes, anyone entering Australia illegally by boat - whether they made it to the mainland or not - would be sent to one of three offshore immigration detention centres for processing.

The government hopes to send even those found to be genuine refugees to a "third country".

The Australian reports Australia’s new approach to boatpeople has not impressed the Indonesian politicians who sparked it, with one senior parliamentarian saying he would be satisfied only when the visas given to 42 Papuan asylum-seekers were withdrawn.

Theo L. Sambuaga, head of the parliamentary foreign affairs and defence committee, said he was disappointed with the changes announced because they "do not review the actual decision".

The world-respected New York Times in reporting the situation said the refugees who landed on Cape York in January attended St. Andrew’s Anglican Church, south of Melbourne, on Palm Sunday.

The refugees told the New York Times they had talked with their relatives back in Papua and had been told that the Indonesian police had been questioning the relatives to determine exactly who fled and why.

The "why" is clear to the refugees and those who support them, including Peter Woods, the pastor of St. Andrew’s, who was a missionary in Papua from 1978 to 1983.

"The Papuans are treated as slaves of the Javanese," he said. As the refugees and other worshippers walked out of St. Andrew’s, they passed a bulletin board with a poster on it that read, "West Papua: An Issue Whose Time Has Come."

Meanwhile, Channel Seven reports Australia could breach its international obligations if it sends all asylum seekers arriving by boat offshore, Amnesty International says.

Amnesty International said Australia could be in breach of its international obligations to refugees if it had one policy for asylum seekers arriving by boat, and another for those who arrived by plane.