Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Bartlett for the supplementary question. As you know, Australia and Indonesia continue to cooperate on a number of matters, such as trade and investment. We cooperate on people-smuggling—and indeed we should. We have interfaith dialogue with them and are cooperating in our responses to avian influenza. It is important that no single issue should detract from the cooperation that Australia has with Indonesia.

I want to make the point that the decisions on temporary protection visas for the 42 Indonesians who arrived in January were made in accordance with Australia’s international and domestic legal obligations, as I said a little earlier. No broad conclusions should be drawn from these decisions. We strongly support Indonesia’s territorial integrity, including its sovereignty over Papua. That is really the critical issue. I do not think we can draw assumptions from the application of the Australian law.