Gillard eyes PNG to house processing centre

AUSTRALIA NETWORK NEWS


The Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has indicated she could pursue Papua New Guinea as a location for an asylum seeker processing centre in the region.

Ms Gillard has backed away from naming East Timor as her preferred place for the site, despite saying she'll pursue talks with the country.

She says she welcomes positive signals from East Timor's leaders about the proposal.

But Ms Gillard says she'll consider other countries too.

"Papua New Guinea I believe is a signatory to the refugee convention but obviously I am now going to build on the set of conversations that we have seen happen this week, a conversation with the President of East Timor, we've now seen the Prime Minister of East Timor express some goodwill," she said.

East Timor's president Jose Ramos Horta was sending out positive signals about hosting a regional asylum seeker processing centre, but said he still wanted more details.

"Purely on humanitarian grounds, we are prepared to listen to the details of the proposal on the part of Australia about what where this processing centre would be, how long it would be on our soil, how many people we would have to accommodate in this centre, who would shoulder the burden of the financial cost of it, all of that," he said.

"We have to look at this in a formal tete-a-tete between our competent officials and [the] Australian side before we can make a final decision [on] whether for us it's a go-ahead or not."

The president said if East Timor was to agree to hosting the centre, it would have to be managed by the United Nations, not the Australian Government.

He also rejected any suggestion that Timor would accept refugees waiting in Indonesia to be resettled.

"If there are people in Indonesia who are already have been already interviewed, who have been cleared, who are people in desperate need of settling elsewhere on a permanent basis, then I don't understand the point of moving them from Indonesia to Timor Leste," he said.

Jose Ramos Horta also says the Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao reacted positively during Thursday's discussions on the asylum seeker proposal.

East Timor's president says the Australian government's plan to send asylum seekers to East Timor will not be a divisive issue in his country.

He says the East Timorese sympathise with the plight of people fleeing violence and extreme poverty.

But many politicans in East Timor oppose the idea.

The opposition Fretilin leader says when the plan was discussed in parliament on Thursday, most Timorses political parties rejected it.

Nauru option

Meanwhile, Australia's opposition leader, Tony Abbott has urged Prime Minister Gillard to "put in a phone call to Nauru" after she backed away from naming East Timor as her preferred location for a regional asylum seeker processing centre.

"Nauru said that they've already got an Australian-built detention facility on the island," said Mr Abbott.

"They would be happy to re-host one of these centres.

"If Julia Gillard is serious about third-country offshore processing, she probably should put in a phone call to Nauru because Nauru stand ready, willing and able, it seems, to accept the facility."

Mr Abbott says Ms Gillard's uncertainty on the location of the processing centre is proof her asylum seeker policy is unravelling.

"I think she is desperately trying to spin her way out of a problem and I don't think the public will be fooled by this," he said.

"I think what we've seen is poor judgement from the Prime Minister, and a total failure of process from the Government."

Comments

  1. AnonymousJuly 9, 2010 at 10:01 AM

    There are already several hundreds of asylum seekers that the Australian Government secretly dumped in Papua New Guinea.

    People of middle east origin bound for Australia have been deported back to PNG.

    These people are housed under different non profit organisation including UNHCR and IOM. These people stay in Papua New Guinea is continuously been funded by the Australian Government.

    You just have to go to some motels, hotels and private real estate to see these middle eastern ethnic groups kept.

    This is Australian problem and they need to sort themselves. Why do we have to be involved!

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJuly 9, 2010 at 11:54 AM

    Papua New Guinea has told Australia that PNG’s current position was that Manus Island would not be recommissioned as an Australian-run detention centre.

    This comes after Australia’s foreign minister, Stephen Smith, met PNG leaders and discussed the new prime minister Julia Gillard’s plans to set up a regional processing centre.

    Ms Gillard had said she had talked to the president of East Timor and the prime minister of New Zealand about her plans.

    She now says she never suggested East Timor was the only location being considered for a refugee processing centre.

    Australia closed its Manus camp in 2008 when it also shut its camp in Nauru - seven years after they both had been set up.

    In 2001, Australia decided that it wanted to process its asylum seekers abroad and approached Pacific countries to make available land for a camp.

    Among them were Fiji, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Palau.

    ReplyDelete

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