Julia Gillard with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono at the presidential palace in Jakarta yesterday before she headed home late last night. Picture: Kym Smith Source: The Australian Matthew Franklin - The Australian - November 03, 2010
JULIA Gillard has failed to win Jakarta's clear support for her proposal to build a regional asylum-seeker processing centre in East Timor.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has instead referred the Prime Minister's plan for a regional framework on people-smuggling for consideration early next year at a meeting of the Bali Process, saying while he is open to the proposal, he needs to be convinced of its efficacy.
The two leaders, meeting in Jakarta yesterday, did agree to begin talks to create an Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership. The talks came on the final day of Ms Gillard's six-day tour of Asia, during which she tried to build support for a regional approach to dealing with asylum-seekers, including the construction of a processing centre in East Timor.
At the weekend, Ms Gillard lobbied leaders at the East Asia Summit before winning guarded support from the Malaysian government during a visit to Kuala Lumpur on Monday.
Yesterday, Ms Gillard came bearing gifts on her first prime ministerial visit to Indonesia, promising Dr Yudhoyono $100 million for each of the next five years to boost his push to ensure all Indonesian children have at least nine years of schooling by 2015.
The money will be used to expand up to 2000 schools and to support 1500 Islamic schools to lift their standards to qualify for accreditation to national standards.
The funding continues previous Australian commitments to the Indonesian education system, including efforts to reduce radical teaching in Islamic schools.
Dr Yudhoyono expressed his appreciation for the assistance, but was non-committal on Ms Gillard's push for a policy shift on asylum-seekers. "I have proposed that early next year we could sit and discuss within the framework of the Bali Process how to best and efficiently deal with the issue of people-smuggling and trafficking in persons," he said.
"Indonesia is open to that but we have to discuss in depth to ensure once again that this is a solution to our regional problems."
Ms Gillard said she looked forward to the ongoing talks as she wanted to destroy the business of people-smugglers by creating a region-wide approach. "There would be no reason for someone to keep engaging in movement around the region because processing arrangements would be the same and there would be collaboration across the region on a protection framework and with a processing centre," she said. Australian government sources said the outcome augured well for Ms Gillard's plans because by pressing the issue at the leadership level of nations in the region she had created the impetus for its serious consideration in coming months.
But, they stressed, as Ms Gillard has made clear all week, her vision for a more orderly system of handling refugees will require much more work to become a reality.
The Prime Minister indicated that she might have to increase or reconfigure aid to Asian governments to deliver her proposal.
Ms Gillard left Indonesia late last night and is due home this morning.
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