The Bidding Continues

 Two months ago I wrote a post entitled "The Bidding has begun" At the time it was about the fact that the Government had suspended the processing of Sri Lankan/Tamil and Afghani asylum seekers, due to "improvements in the home countries" and Tony Abbotts predictable response.

Well today our new Prime Minister, Julia Gillard decided that she was going step into the bidding war.

Today Gillard announced the following proposal:

• A "Regional Processing Centre" to be established in Dili
• All arrivals by boat to be sent to Dili for processing, thus ensuring that no boat arrival is processed on Australian soil

There was no announcement of what would happen to the asylum seekers if they are found to be genuine, how they would be housed in Dili (I'm assuming Australia is going to be spending up big to build the sort of infrastructure that's going to be required) and if they would be allowed freedom of movement in Dili or whether it would just be moving the facilities at Christmas Island to another country.

So now we have a choice of off shoring policies for asylum seekers, either we vote for Labor and off shore them to Dili or we vote for the Coalition and off shore them to somewhere else.

Sigh.

The thing that has annoyed me the most about this whole sordid piece has been the fact that Gillard has leapt with both feet into the "asylum seekers are scary" camp. Rather than take the time to explain that Boat arrivals account for less than squat in our immigration scheme, that they are outnumbered by at least 25 to 1 by known visa overstayers, she has decided that it is politically more expedient to play to the fears.

Politically, Gillard has ensured that the Labor party can never back down from this point. She has vindicated the previous Governments Pacific Solution (something the Labor party fought against tooth and nail), and said to the electorate, "we know you're scared, so we're going to take away the scary people".