Yesterday, I quickly knocked out a preliminary analysis of the agreement between Australia and Papua New Guinea. As predicted, there hasn’t been much analysis of the new policy, but lots of gnashing of teeth. Since then, the content of the agreement has been released and we have got a better picture of what’s going on.
Needless to say, the agreement shows that this is really a fourth- or fifth-best option. We should continue to ask whether this approach perverts something important in the unwritten understanding of what a Regional Cooperative Approach (also called a Regional Protection Arrangement, also called a Regional Protection Framework) would be.
Only The Sangfroid 