RAAF drone to cut hitchhiker biosecurity risks from illegal boat arrivals

Farmers and local government officials have recently demanded a greater military presence in the region as pressure mounts on the government over border protection.

The MQ-4C Triton is one of four high altitude, long endurance, remotely piloted aircraft systems on order, it arrived at the RAAF's Tindal base in the Northern Territory on June 16.

When it enters operational service, the technology will provide the Australian Defence Force with an eye in the sky to be utilised for a range of maritime patrol and surveillance tasks.

Several illegal vessels have been detected in Australian waters since the arrival of the first asylum seeker boat onto mainland Australia in nine years last November.

The issue was raised in a closed-door meeting between three peak farming groups and Agriculture Minister Murray Watt in Perth in late February soon after 39 men who had sailed from Indonesia were found in the remote Indigenous community of Beagle Bay, about 100 kilometres north of Broome.

Soon after that meeting 15 boat arrivals were found near the Mungalalu-Truscott Airbase, 600 northeast of Broome, and taken to Nauru, as were an earlier group of 12 asylum seekers located in the same area last November.

Last week nine Chinese nationals were allegedly forced back into Indonesian waters by the Australian Border Force, last month a group of 10 Chinese citizens passed the shoreline while others have been intercepted at sea.

The Triton's will be operated by RAAF aircrew of the reformed Number 9 squadron from the Edinburgh base in South Australia. Some believe that a flaw of the model is being unable to adequately monitor small wooden boats, although this claim has been vigorously dismissed by those closest to the program.

In April, Nationals leader David Littleproud called for biosecurity officers to be used operationally with Border Force patrols to manage potential biosecurity risks following the arrival of the third boat of suspected illegal immigrants along the remote Kimberley coastline in just six months.

Meanwhile, officials have also detected an increasing number of illegal fishing boats in northern Australian waters, while locals report foreign fishermen and crew camping on islands across the region.

Exmouth shire president Matthew Niikkula recently demanded that armed forces undertake increased coastal surveillance and Wyndham East Kimberley shire president David Menzel said arrivals were targeting more populated areas with "pinpoint accuracy."

"We've got over 40 per cent of Australia's exports going out of this corner of the country and got a few soldiers somewhere guarding the whole show," he said.

"But there's also the biosecurity risk, it's certainly not far from Indonesia."

West Australian Premier Roger Cook said the situation emphasised "just how exposed our vast north-west coast is."

He added that the matter was "fundamentally" a federal government responsibility and "that's why we need to continue to make sure we have the resources to protect our coasts."

Mr Watt told AGM Agri that "our government takes protecting Australia's biosecurity system very seriously."

Pastoralists and Graziers' Association of Western Australia president Tony Seabrook said in February that the nation's "rampant" wild pig population would be the most likely vector to spread a disease through the livestock industry, and that a disease incursion that originated in remote Australia could be circulating "for many months" before detection.

"If a disease comes into the country with unobserved illegal immigrants, and into the pig populations, it is a virulent disease that spreads very quickly," he said.

"You might sense the urgency in my voice. Wild pigs are everywhere and any attempt to exterminate them has failed miserably."