Hot on the heels of her backdown to the mining companies, new Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced the revival of John Howard's "Pacific Solution", with plans to build a refugee "processing centre" in East Timor. As Larvatus Prodeo points out, the only difference between this and Howard's racist policy is that it is not in the Pacific Ocean. But the basics - refugees illegally transferred to a country other than the one they have claimed asylum in, then isolated and subjected to endless bureaucratic delays in the hope they will "voluntarily" return to the terror they are fleeing (or at least go and bug someone else) remain.
But what's really disturbing is that John Key has apparently indicated that New Zealand is interested in participating in this atrocity. We should not have a bar of it. Australia's policy is racist, illegal and immoral. And we should be telling them that, rather than helping them.
