Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to her proposal for a regional processing centre in East Timor. Will the Prime Minister define which countries constitute ‘the region’ under her proposal?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I know the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, like the Minister for Foreign Affairs, has flown over a lot of countries in the last few days, but Australia is in the same place it was when she left—so, on the basis that Australia is in the same place that it was when she left, we live in the same region. How would you like to define it? ‘Asia-Pacific’ might be the kind of way that you would define it, I think. Australia has not moved since she left. We will pursue dialogue. But there are formal processes for pursuing this dialogue, including through the Bali process that the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship has referred to in his various statements. The minister for immigration has also been involved in dialogue in the region. Prior to the parliament commencing its sittings, he was in Dili, he was in Kuala Lumpur and he was in Jakarta pursuing these discussions. So we will work on this dialogue. We are obviously predominantly interested in the countries through which people transit, the most common routes for irregular people movement. You would expect that to be our prime area of interest. But, in terms of working across the region, we obviously want to work broadly with regional partners and neighbours.