PHUKET: The riddle of Australia's approach to Southeast Asia and its problems grew a little deeper over the weekend with an oblique statement from Canberra.

The Australian government announced that it plans to help Burma (Myanmar) deal with ''border management'' including governance, training and development, and systems and technology.

''Threats to our borders are growing and a regional approach is vital to counter people smuggling, terrorism and transnational crime,'' the immigration minister, Scott Morrison, told Australian Associated Press.

Some parts of the plan, including establishing an electronic visa for tourists, have already been successfully implemented, the report said.

Dealing with the growing number of incoming tourists as Burma's economy booms is the easy part.

Dealing with the outgoing Rohingya Muslims, fleeing persecution under an ethnic cleansing campaign that has the tacit approval of the Burmese government, is far more difficult.

Some 15,000 Rohingya are estimated to have been forced to take to boats to flee Burma since October 15.

Many of them remain unaccounted for, although hundreds have fetched up in Thailand and others are believed to have been last heading for Malaysia, Indonesia and probably Australia.

In an effort to quell the disturbing intolerance towards the Rohingya, US President Barack Obama on his visit last month again called on Burmese authorities to stop mistreating its Muslim minority.

''Discrimination against the Rohingya or any other religious minority does not express the kind of country that Burma over the long term wants to be,'' he said.

Australia's own inhumane policy of turning back boatloads of would-be refugees would evaporate if countries such as Burma could be persuaded not to create the refugees in the first place.

In the past two years, mainstream first-world policy on Burma has turned from unabashed support of the early signs of democratic change to a realisation that Burma's brutal treatment of its ethnic minorities must be resolved.

Unlike Obama and the European Union, Australia has been strangely silent about Burma's appalling treatment of the Rohingya, many of whom die at sea or fall into the arms of human traffickers.

Rather than help Burma deal with a growing number of tourist arrivals, isn't it in Australia's best interests for Canberra to be joining Obama in trying to stem the flow of fleeing Rohingya where it begins, inside Burma?

Australia's own heartless approach seems to leave it in the embarrassing position of not even being able to follow the US approach in calling for a change by Burma towards the persecuted Rohingya.

Sadly, the MoU on ''border control'' between Australia and Burma unites the two countries in the region with the harshest attitudes and poorest reputations for dealing with unwanted people.