Australia yesterday defended plans for a regional asylum-seeker center, which left new Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard in a foreign-policy muddle just two weeks after taking office.
Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said the government would hold talks with East Timor and Indonesia this week over the center, rejecting criticism that Gillard did not consult properly before announcing the policy.
“No one is underestimating or under-appreciating just how difficult an exercise this is,” Smith said.
“And people who expect that you can announce it with a bow-tie on top, all locked up on day one, frankly don’t appreciate the reality of a very difficult issue for all of the countries in the region, not just Australia,” he said.
Smith said he would discuss the processing center in Indonesia this week and that officials would start a “detailed discussion” with aid-dependent East Timor, where reaction to the plan has been mixed.
Australia’s first woman leader, in her first foreign policy speech, said she was in talks with East Timor about housing poor Asian migrants who arrive off northern Australia in rickety boats.
However, she later said East Timor was only “one possibility” for the center, raising questions about its location and how much planning had gone into the proposal.
Gillard was also criticized for raising the plan with East Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta, rather than the more powerful East Timorese Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, and for not consulting Indonesia, a major transit point.
She also discussed the idea with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, and New Zealand Prime Minister John Key, who said they spoke the day before her speech.
Smith said the government’s actions had been “entirely appropriate”, adding that he would discuss the matter with Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa during a visit this week.
“There’s been very informal discussions at lower levels over a period about whether a regional processing center might be appropriate,” he said.
“We’ve decided to raise the matter now formally, to take the cudgels up. It’s the first time we’ve seen a regional leader say let’s see if we can get this effected,” he said.
Both Gillard’s Labor Party and the conservative Liberals have unveiled tough policies on asylum-seekers.
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