Father Frank Brennan doesn't want a processing centre in East Timor. Picture: David Geraghty Source: Herald Sun Herald Sun - August 19, 2010
HUMAN rights leader Father Frank Brennan has condemned Julia Gillard's proposal to locate an offshore processing centre in East Timor as "unprincipled and unworkable".
Ms Gillard maintained she would pursue an offshore facility as "an absolute top priority" if Labor were returned on Saturday.
But Father Brennan, director of the Public Policy Institute at the Australian Catholic University, said asylum seekers would make a dangerous rush by sea towards any such facility.
"There may be merit in the idea of a regional processing centre, but East Timor is the last place in the region you'd put it. I think the idea of East Timor is unprincipled and unworkable," Father Brennan said.
"What you've got to do with a regional processing centre is avoid the honey-pot effect, which is attracting even more people to make journeys from far away to reach this region."
The powerful East Timorese church has also called on its Government to respect the wishes of its national Parliament, which in June passed a resolution condemning the detention centre plan.
"If the Parliament has rejected this proposal, and they are legislated representatives of the people, we should respect this," Father Martinho Gusmao said.
"We have officially rejected it. It is finished."
Father Brennan said many poverty-stricken East Timorese also wished to live in Australia and would ask: "Why is it people in the regional processing centre can get to Australia but we can't?"
He said the federal Opposition's plan for Nauru would be more acceptable because it was so distant that it would not have the honey-pot effect.
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