Just two days after announcing the government’s rejigged strategy on boat people, Julia Gillard appears to have taken a bizarre back-flip on the whereabouts of her proposed regional processing (read: detention) centre.
Despite floating East Timor as a possible location during her speech at the Lowy Institute on Tuesday and answering questions about East Timor from the press afterwards, the PM now refutes the suggestion that she locked in a location. Gillard said on radio yesterday “I am not going to leave undisturbed the impression that I made an announcement about a specific location.”
Questions were raised about East Timor’s thoughts on the whole “we want to build a detention centre in your country” thing after some commentators, including Professor Damian Kingsbury who wrote in Wednesday’s Crikey, acknowledged that Gillard canvassed the topic with East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta.
However, Ramos-Horta’s portfolio is largely ceremonial and Gillard would’ve been far better advised to have consulted with Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao.
Kinsbury wrote:
The view within Dili was otherwise one of surprise – no-one seems to have been forewarned, much less consulted about this proposal. Indeed, one minister was privately saying that the East Timorese government had been ‘blind-sided’. This is at best poor diplomacy.
What to make of these events? Was Gillard’s speech misleading or simply misinterpreted? Was it bad diplomacy or is the media cooking up a storm in a teacup? And, most importantly, is this the PM’s first backflip as leader of the country?
Here’s what the commentariat are saying.
The Australian
Matthew Franklin and Stephen Fitzpatrick: PM Julia Gillard retreats on Timor plan
Julia Gillard has dramatically backtracked on her plan to build a refugee processing facility in East Timor.
The Prime Minister’s backdown came after the tiny nation’s parliament formally condemned the idea as unworkable.
The Age
Misha Schubert, Michael Gordon and Tom Allard: Gillard in retreat on Timor
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has begun retreating from plans for a refugee processing centre in East Timor, amid widespread hostility to the proposal in the island nation and claims that she bungled negotiations.
Sydney Morning Herald
Phillip Coorey and Tom Allard: Gillard eats her words over refugees
Sentiment against the proposal is strong in East Timor. Senior government members have criticised it, the opposition has denounced it, and the leader of Mr Gusmao’s political party, Dionisio Babo Soares, said the country was ”not in a position yet to accept these boat people”.
The Daily Telegraph
Staff writer: Julia’s boat policy sinks
Julia Gillard’s Dili Solution appears dead in the water, with the Prime Minister yesterday making the extraordinary claim that she had never planned to build an asylum seeker processing facility in East Timor.
The Herald Sun
Andrew Bolt: Oops! Gillard sunk by own words on solving boat people crisis
Julia Gillard may have thrown away the election in just 48 hours of the most comprehensive bungling.
The Punch
Tory Maguire: Campaign countdown: the 2-day border protection plan
When Julia Gillard stepped to the microphone at the Lowy Institute on Tuesday morning she was hoping to neutralise border protection as an election issue. Instead she had the opposite effect.
what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.
Julia – much simpler to face up to our obligations, educate the electorate and become a mature nation with respect to the Refugee conventions – Australia was the first signatory to.
We – including the media – may have to pay closer attention to Gillard’s actual words: you know, to what she says.
Imagining she said something other than what she said will land somebody in trouble.
True, it will be mostly Gillard. When the media universally misreported what she said, it was not unnatural that there was a widespread view that she had East Timor in mind as the location for her envisioned centre. And maybe she does, too. But she didn’t say so. Basically, she said she wanted a discussion about such a regional centre (mentioning East Timor and New Zealand as potential fellow-discussants).
Learning to read – such a long process.
@pdtlamb
so much for the great communicator if the message received weren’t the words spoken
why was Saint Julia so insistent that she had made the correct approach to Timor when questioned by Tony Jones – and what about the reported connection with Bracks and a Timor solution – what was the message and what were the words? –
Why should anyone be surprised at the MSM first misrepresenting Gillard and then claiming she’s ‘backflipped’ – the backflip claim was one of their most potent weapons against Rudd, so naturally they will continue to try and use it.
But it is a storm in a teacup. Like the RSPT (anyone remember that one?), the Asylum Seeker debate will most likely be off the front page by next week. It was never about policy in any case – it was always about simply responding to the stupid “my balls are bigger than yours” campaign being run by the fruit loop.
Marks to date for Julia:
RSPT: 6/10
Asylum Seekers: 4/10
On average I don’t think Julia is doing any better (or worse) than Rudd would have done on these issues (and the polls seem to agree). But since the opposition remains an unelectable policy-free zone, she didn’t really need to do much on these minor issues anyway except make a decision and stick to it – it didn’t even really matter what the decision was (which I guess was the thing Kevin didn’t really understand).
But next up is the “biggie” – Climate Change. It will be interesting to see how she does on that one. Then (thankfully!) we can get on with the actual election.
Gillard seemed to indicate on ABC’s Lateline Wed night that she had East Timor in mind:
Lateline: Is there anywhere else at all where it could be set up?
Gillard: Well, I think that is in part a question for the discussions but East Timor has obviously indicated a preparedness to explore this idea further …
Lateline: So briefly, you wouldn’t rule out the possibility of transferring the several thousand people in Indonesia waiting to get on people smuggling boats to East Timor at an appropriate time?
Gillard: Certainly I wouldn’t rule that out …