IT is just a week since Kevin Rudd revealed his phony Regional Resettlement Arrangement with Papua New Guinea and like all the remedial programs he has previously rolled-out to deal with his other failed policies, this too, is destructing.

In the past week alone, at least eight illegal boats, with at least 651 passengers have arrived and at least nine people have drowned with dozens still missing, including 30 children.

(Addition its now 11 BOATS  Four boatloads of asylum-seekers carrying 296 people have reached Christmas Island since Wednesday night, taking the total to 816 people from 11 boats in seven days. Two more boats )

Not only has Rudd failed to stop the boats, he has also managed to undermine the long-standing relationship between Australia and our nearest neighbour and largest foreign aid recipient. Yesterday, Prime Minister Rudd acknowledged some of the difficulties without admitting that he was solely responsible for the crisis.

“If it was easy, we’d walk away and it would all sort itself out by tomorrow lunchtime,” he said. “There will be difficulties along the way, bumps in the road - I’d rather level with the Australian people."Kevvie, you are the nation’s biggest road hump.

Over the past few days, I’ve spoken about Rudd’s latest disaster with numerous people in PNG, academics, lawyers, business leaders and politicians, including Dr Allan Marat, a former deputy prime minister and acting governor-general and former minister for justice and former attorney-general.

(Disclosure: I was born in Wewak though I disappoint my callers because I do not attempt, as Rudd did, to speak pidgin.)

Marat says the policy represents an Australian policy shift (rather than a regional co-operative move) assisted by the government of PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill and his deputy, Leo Dion, designed to fix Rudd’s domestic political problems relating to asylum-seekers BUT it adds more problems to PNG’s “already burgeoning social, economic, and political problems that Australia will not solve with its political bribery.”

“The RRA was never meant for the benefit of PNG but for the relief of Australia from its own political mess,” he says.

“PNG’s ‘assistance’ to its friend Australia amounts to a misdirected and misapplied political mandates by O’Neill and his cabinet ministers

."The most glaring problem is that there is no land for the proposed resettled refugees. Ninety seven per cent of land in PNG is subject to customary ownership and large tracts are tied up in never-ending land disputes.

There is no “no-man’s land” available. Even finding housing for public servants is a major problem and uncontrolled migration from rural areas into urban centres like Lae and Port Moresby bring housing difficulties and increase the already high levels of unemployment.

Population pressure is increasing the demand on an already struggling economy wracked by uncontrolled corruption and economic mismanagement. Youth issues pose a real problem with critical levels of youth unemployment, teenage pregnancies and the number of single parent families on the rise with no government welfare support programs.

The prospect of many thousands of Muslims arriving in PNG through the Rudd-designed program alarms the locals who feel Christianity - which is recognised in the preamble to the PNG Constitution - will be threatened.

“Australia will force Muslims to enter PNG,” Marat says. “Anti-Western Muslim militants always claim that an overseas attack on any Muslim is an attack on every Muslim; yet the same extremists are not calling on their fellow citizens to demonstrate practical aid to the asylum-seekers who are in strife.”

Marat says the arrangement represented neo-colonialism or re-colonisation by Australia.

He says some believe both PMs (PNG and Australian) are “good at making public announcements but are hopeless at actually implementing policies”.

“It is said that both PMs are brilliant at ‘low’ politics, but they are hopeless at actually governing - and stopping the boats is a real test of whether or not you can be an adult government and that is a test that the PNC has consistently failed,” he says. “What is PNG’s Government policy that will ensure boat arrivals stop? None!”

Marat says a “failed Australian government policy and its messy consequences are now being dumped onto an already problem-riddled neighbour PNG”. He says the RRA is Australia’s fundamental repudiation of its commitment to protect refugees.

“Australia has bought off O’Neill, and his cabinet ministers, to solve Australia’s most difficult asylum-seekers policy problem,” he says.

Marat predicts there will be a humanitarian crisis in PNG because the nation does not have the capacity and ability at all to process refugees.

“PNG has failed the West Papuan refugees,” he says. “What does PNG hope to do with the tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of refugees on their way to Australia and diverted to PNG?

“O’Neill and his ministers should ask Australia to revert back to its turn-back policy for asylum-seekers’ boats where it is safe to do so. Turn back the boat to its port of origin.”

He says it should also reintroduce the Howard government’s border protection policy, including temporary protection visas. This “arrangement” will meet the same fate as Julia Gillard’s East Timor deal, he says. All announcement but no reality.