While Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd spent last weekend hustling his idea of a European-Union-style Asian community with open borders, his government was pandering to those Australians who are fretting about a handful of asylum seekers from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan risking their lives on leaky boats in treacherous waters off the Indonesian coastline to get to Australia.
The image Rudd is projecting about his country to much of Asia must seem a little confusing at the moment. And, at worst, it is reinforcing a commonly held view in Asia that, while Australia is geographically a part of the region, it is still a closed Anglo-European society in the way it deals with Sri Lankans, Afghans and other refugees from Asian and Middle Eastern trouble spots.
Rudd's Asian community idea is one he has been pushing for almost two years and at the East Asia Summit, held at Hua Hin in Thailand over the past weekend, he argued the case again. 'What I detect across the region is an openness to a discussion about how we evolve our regional architecture into the future,' Rudd said before he addressed his fellow regional leaders.
Greater co-operation around Asia in areas such as the economy, trade, the environment and defence are a good idea and they must be predicated on the principle of openness and greater freedom of movement, which would include liberalised migration policies. Australia, as a developed nation with one of the largest economies in Asia, is well placed to take the leadership role that Rudd clearly wants to play in moving towards establishing an EU style of political infrastructure.
But, if Australia is to really gain traction and attract committed followers to the idea, it needs to sort out how it deals with asylum seekers and refugees.
No issue has done more damage to Australia's reputation as a liberal, outward-looking and tolerant nation in recent years than the inhumane and xenophobic way it has dealt with asylum seekers who risk their lives on dangerous voyages, having paid people smugglers their life savings, to flee terror and oppression.