The Indonesian government denied Australia's requests to send asylum seeking boat people back to Indonesia on two occasions since the launch of Operation Sovereign Borders, according to Australian government reports. Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said on Sunday that his government had made four requests to Indonesia to accept asylum seekers whom the coastal patrol had found in Indonesia's search and rescue region. The Coalition government had adopted a shroud of secrecy around its border security policy and this revelation by the immigration minister has come as a surprise to many.

Mr Morrision statement comes after a The Jakarta Post report on Saturday said the Indonesian government had rejected Australian request to take back boat people.

The Jakarta Post quoted Agus Barnas, spokesman of the Indonesian co-ordinating minister for Legal, Political and Security Affairs saying that since September, when the new government took office in Australia, Indonesia had received six such requests of which three were rejected.

'For the sake of correcting the public record ... two were accepted and two were not,'' Mr Morrison said on Sunday.

Commenting on the report appearing in the Jakarta Post, Australia's Senate Opposition leader, Penny Wong, said it was ''absurd'' that Australian citizens had to read Indonesian newspapers to know about the government's policies on stopping asylum seekers.

''Australians are looking to the Jakarta Post to get information about what their government is doing,'' Senator Wong told ABC radio on Monday.

''It says something very, very telling about this Prime Minister and this government. They are a government that doesn't want to tell Australians what they are doing.''

Mr Morrison, meanwhile, on Sunday said, the procedure under Operation Sovereign Borders was to ''seek the safe return of passengers rescued at sea to Indonesia ... where the rescue was conducted within Indonesia's search and rescue region and in close proximity to the Indonesian coast''.

''I have given the Indonesian government an assurance that we would not canvass these requests publicly when and if they are made and I intend to honour that commitment. For the sake of correcting the public record, our post had made four such requests, under Operation Sovereign Borders, two were accepted and two were not." Mr Morrison said.