Use camp refugees as live targets, says Australian mayor

The mayor of an Australian town caused outrage yesterday by suggesting asylum-seekers at a detention centre could be used as "live target practice" by soldiers on a nearby firing range.

Peter Davis, mayor of Port Lincoln in South Australia, was referring to plans to replace Woomera, a grim detention centre in the desert, with a camp being built near Port Augusta. His town is in the same state, about 200 miles west.

Mr Davis noted yesterday that the new site was next to El Alamein, an army range. "The only place I would tolerate a centre is El Alamein," he said. "In fact, when the army is in training, they can use the recalcitrant illegal immigrants as live target practice."

His remarks were greeted with disgust by the South Australian Premier, Mike Rann, who said they were not worth dignifying with a response. Refugee organisations condemned Mr Davis as unfit for office.

The director of the Australian Refugee Association, Kevin Liston, said: "Obviously, we've got a serious situation when a person in a public position expresses that kind of view." Mr Davis, a keen supporter of Pauline Hanson's far-right One Nation Party, was widely criticised a few years ago when he described the children of mixed-race marriages as "mongrels".

The Australian government is embroiled in another refugee controversy amid claims that the Navy could have prevented the drowning of 353 asylum-seekers off Indonesia last October. The government maintains the boat was in Indonesia's search-and-rescue zone.

But intelligence reports quoted by The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday suggest that the boat was in international waters, in an area constantly monitored by Royal Australian Air Force planes. Some survivors even claim they saw Australian warships on the horizon as the boat was going down.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, angrily defended the Navy yesterday. "To suggest that the Navy stood by and allowed people to die is appalling, and I'm perfectly satisfied the Navy behaved honourably, decently and expeditiously," he said.