Editorial: Boat-people not yet a threat to NZ

Australian PM Julia Gillard wants to set up a processing centre on East Timor to house asylum-seekers while their claims to refugee status are assessed. Photo / Getty Images

Opinion

During the final days of Kevin Rudd's term as the Prime Minister of Australia, John Key had no trouble rebuffing a call from him for an Anzac training unit to be formed in Afghanistan. Julia Gillard's sudden elevation to the top job in Canberra creates a whole new issue, however. Mr Key does not want to get off on the wrong foot. Probably that is why he has agreed to discuss Ms Gillard's idea of setting up a regional processing centre on East Timor to house asylum-seekers while their claims to refugee status are assessed. No other reason is particularly cogent, given that both the merit of the concept and its relevance to New Zealand are highly questionable.

This country would derive value from pouring resources into such a centre only if it was a target for refugee boats. Mr Key has tried to suggest such a threat will exist at some time. "I have been warning New Zealanders for quite some time that these boats are becoming larger and, therefore, more capable of coming to New Zealand," he said. But a sizeable influx continues to be highly unlikely, given the treacherous conditions that boats would have to battle to get here. Australia has been singled out by the Indonesia-based people-smugglers with good reason. Mr Key must, therefore, come up with more detailed and compelling evidence of a threat if this country's participation in a regional centre is to make sense.

Probably there will never be the need for that because the proposed centre has all the hallmarks of off-the-cuff electioneering. Ms Gillard, having neutralised the mining-tax issue, now wants to defuse the issue of asylum-seekers as a prelude to announcing a general election. She is confronted by an Opposition that is striving to gain capital from some Australians' fear of a flood of boat-people. Ms Gillard had not even discussed the idea with the East Timorese or with New Zealand's Prime Minister before Monday. Indeed, its scantiness was fully exposed by East Timor's Deputy Prime Minister, Jose Luis Guterres, who said his country was not yet ready for such a centre. It would, he indicated, be an unwanted issue for a nation replete with problems.

There are other reasons for thinking Ms Gillard's concept will not go far. One is that such centres, while blocking people from Australia or New Zealand, do not create enough doubt about acceptance to deter people from taking on a perilous voyage. Ms Gillard's idea differs from John Howard's "Pacific solution", which led to asylum-seekers being sent to centres on Nauru, Papua New Guinea and Christmas Island, only in that the United Nations High Commission for Refugees would be asked to preside. Mr Howard had some success in stemming the flow, but it was only a respite. Whatever Mr Rudd's perceived softer stance, Australia's problem escalated significantly with the end of the Sri Lankan civil war. This prompted a wave of Tamil refugees who have overwhelmed detention facilities at the remaining centre on Christmas Island.

Nor would a regional processing centre on East Timor provide any solution to the essential problem posed by the asylum-seekers. Mr Key has indicated that New Zealand's agreement to consider the idea does not mean it wants to be involved in resettlement. This country did not wish to increase its annual intake of 750 refugees under the UN system or accept a reduced quality of refugee, he said. The latter becomes a probability if boat-people, wrongly, gain an advantage over those who pursue normal immigration processes.

Mr Key has reasons for dipping his toe in the water in response to Ms Gillard's appeal. But he should not be looking to swim far from shore. Certainly not until there is substantial evidence that Australia's problem with boat-people is about to cross the Tasman.