That’s what the proposal to have an offshore refugee processing facility in East Timor looks to have been.  Something our new prime minister, the ranga queen, Julia Gillard, made up the other day as a response to political pressure to do something about the problem of asylum seekers illegally entering Australia by boat.

East Timor’s Deputy Prime Minister, Jose Luis Guterres, says his country is ”very unlikely” to accept a refugee processing centre.  He says they flatly rejected it initially but are now only considering it because Ms Gillard put it formally to East Timor.  In fact Ms Gillard seems only to have raised the subject with Timorese president Jose Ramos Horta on Monday night, before announcing it as government policy at a speech on Tuesday, ie:

"Today I announce that we will begin a new initiative. In recent days I have discussed with President Ramos Horta of East Timor the possibility of establishing a regional processing centre for the purpose of receiving and processing of the irregular entrants to the region."

She announced this policy before consulting with the Timorese government, led by prime minister Xanana Gusmao.  There is significant opposition to the plan among other politicians in East Timor, including members of the prime minister’s own party. Aderito Hugo da Costa said he did not support the idea, regardless of whether it would bring a financial windfall for East Timor.

"The issue is how we have time to look at (other countries’) problems, rather than look at our own people’s problems,"

Mr da Costa said. Not an unreasonable position in my view.

Mr Guterres echoed much the same sentiments:

”East Timor is one of the poorest countries in the world. We have huge problems. It is difficult for any government to invite, for any politician, to invite any problem to another country that he is not prepared to face, to solve,”

”As a citizen and a member of cabinet, I can advance to you that it’s very unlikely that East Timor will accept the proposal.”

It seems too that the regional part of Ms Gillard’s plan hasn’t got much behind it either.   She discussed her plan with the New Zealand Prime Minister, John Key, during a five-minute phone call on Monday night. Mr Key was cautious about embracing the proposal and yesterday the NZ Labour opposition said the nation should keep out of what is an intense domestic political debate in Australia.   PNG doesn’t seem too interested either – and have indicated they won’t be reopening the Manus Island detention centre that operated to process asylum seekers during the period of the Howard government.

Given the lukewarm response to her proposal, Ms Gillard now seems intent on demonstrating that she is just another politician more interested in appearances than substance, now claiming that the East Timor location proposed was not necessarily the only one the government was considering.  She now says:

“I did outline a vision and the vision was for a regional processing centre, and that is important because it completely undercuts the people-smuggling market because they no longer have a product to sell,"

"I’m not going to leave undisturbed the impression that I made an announcement about a specific location."

Yep, I’m convinced (not).  It looks to me that in her haste to appear to be doing something about the asylum seeker problem she took some half baked idea that she or her advisors dreamed up over the weekend and rushed to announce it.  Looks like Julia’s got things under control, doesn’t it?

Now, this whole asylum seeker issue is only a political hotcake because both main parties in Australia are out and out pandering to the racist bogan vote.  There is a group of people who believe asylum seekers are to be feared, and that they will overrun the country somehow if the arrival of refugees by boat is unchecked.  Rather than pandering to this view, our political leaders should be telling those voters to pull their heads in.  Basically the number of asylum seekers coming to Australia is a couple of thousand a year, literally a drop in the ocean in the global scheme of things, even in the context of Australia’s immigration levels.  There is just nothing to be paranoid about, people.

It’s funny how the refugees arriving illegally by boat are seen by many Australians to deserve to be treated harshly, basically shut out of the country, yet the same doesn’t apply for illegal immigrants who fly here, and overstay their visas or similar.  What’s the difference?  Surely not that the people coming by boat happen to be inconveniently dark skinned and Muslim, while the ones coming by plane are predominantly white skinned, or Asian?

The attitude of a significant number of Australians to asylum seekers, and the governments treatment of them since the Tampa incident is something that should be condemned and something this country should be deeply ashamed of.  It truly is disgusting!

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