Deutsche Bank-donated asylum boat hits our shores The boat carrying Sri Lankan asylum seekers which pulled into Geraldton Harbour / Pic: Graeme Gibbons Source: The Daily Telegraph THE 66 asylum seekers who yesterday reached Geraldton, just 425km north of Perth, travelled to Australia in a fishing boat donated to Sri Lanka after the Boxing Day tsunami. In a border protection embarrassment for the government, the group reached WA undetected with immigration officials scrambling to reach the town to detain the asylum seekers who claimed they want to go to New Zealand. A legal loophole which is yet to be closed more than six months after the Houston panel recommended action means that because they reached the mainland it will be almost impossible for the government to send the asylum seekers to be processed offshore. After being at sea for as many as 44 days the boat carrying Sri Lankan men, women and children cruised into Geraldton harbour yesterday afternoon, stunning locals. Their vessel was branded with Deutsche Bank's logo and was in bank colours with a spokesman confirming similar vessels were donated after Sri Lankan fishing communities were devastated by the 2004 tsunami. "Deutsche Bank contributed substantially to the 2004 tsunami relief efforts, including donating fishing boats to communities in Sri Lanka (where people) had lost their livelihood, this appears to be one of those boats," a bank spokesman said. Asylum boats are taken back to sea and burnt for quarantine reasons. One of the men stood on deck holding a sign stating: "We want to go to New Zealand, please help us." New Zealand's Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse said he would be briefed by officials this morning and that: "New Zealand and Australian immigration has a history of working well together around these sort of situations and we will work closely on this." Department of Immigration officials were rushing to Geraldton to arrange the group's transfer to Christmas Island. Despite the move to detain them outside Australia's migration zone, a Department official confirmed the asylum seekers would still be classed as mainland arrivals and almost certainly avoid offshore processing. Legislation to excise the Australian mainland from the migration zone, a recommendation of the Houston panel, has been left idle by the government in the senate. Government sources said people smugglers were deliberately trying to send boats to Darwin to avoid offshore processing but the Geraldton boat caught Customs off guard. Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said the government should have put forward the excision legislation, which the Coalition supports, when parliament was sitting last month rather than trying to ram through its doomed media bills. "The excision of the mainland could have been legislation to ensure that anyone who reached mainland would be subject to offshore processing," he said. The government's priorities are wrong, silencing their critics was more important than stopping boats. A spokeswoman for Immigration Minister Brendan O'Connor said: "The government is committed to passing this legislation. It has been through the house, it was listed for debate in the senate last sittings and is expected to be debated in the senate next sittings and we call on the opposition and the Greens Party to support it.