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Police in the Indonesian city of Kupang have named seven men as people-smuggling suspects after intercepting a boat on suspicion it was being used to take a group of Chinese men to Australia.
It was the second, and possibly the third, interception in Indonesia this year of groups of Chinese nationals seeking to head to Australia by boat, and it took place while Australia's Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neal was in the country discussing counter-people-smuggling efforts with Indonesian counterparts.
The interception took place on Wednesday in the harbour at Kupang, a traditional departure point in West Timor, part of East Nusa Tenggara province, and involved a boat carrying six Chinese men along with a larger group of Indonesians.
Local police say the Chinese men arrived in Kupang after travelling by sea from south Sulawesi, about 900 kilometres to the north.
The journey from Kupang to the north-east Australian coast would be a further 500 kilometres over sea.
One of the Chinese men, Jiang Xiao Jia, was named along with six Indonesians as organisers of the alleged people-smuggling effort, which carries a jail sentence in Indonesia of between five and 15 years.
This latest interception follows a similar incident in March involving police stopping a group of 10 men and one woman from China on Rote island, near Kupang.
Police at the time suspected they were planning to head to Australia but released them citing a lack of evidence.
Nine newspapers reported in March a similar group of 15 men from China being stopped and released in Kupang.
A fisherman in Kupang told the ABC Australian Federal Police officers visited the city this year and regularly made contact to ask if any people were seeking to travel to Australia.
In April, a boat with 10 Chinese men managed to arrive on WA's remote coastline and walk onto a small airstrip without the Australian Border Force or other agencies detecting them.
One of the men told the ABC after being moved to a detention facility on Nauru that he was seeking economic opportunities in Australia.
Three other boats of people suspected of seeking to enter Australia have made it to Australian waters this year, including one this week carrying 33 suspected asylum seekers who reached Christmas Island.
The revelation of a fresh interception of people seeking to travel to Australia by boat in Indonesia comes as the issue of people smuggling regains prominence in the bilateral relationship.
Ms O'Neal this week met Indonesia's powerful Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs, Hadi Tjahjanto, along with other senior security and law figures.
Her visit came after Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles in February discussed people smuggling and other issues with Prabowo Subianto, who will be sworn in as the country's next president later this year.
Under a longstanding regional cooperation agreement, Australia spends tens of millions of dollars each year funding Indonesian counter-people-smuggling efforts as well as programs to process asylum seekers under the UN-linked International Organisation for Migration.