I think the Python importer could definitely be improved. Maybe there are some lines that make is slow, and those could be optimized. We would need to profile the code, as explained in this recent thread, Python profiling tutorial.
I like Python, so I think it makes sense to have a Python importer that is simple to test and use. Of course, if you can make a better C++ importer that would also be good. My problem is I'm not good at C++, so it would take me a while to get some progress done on that. But if you can get a C++ programmer to work on it, hey, that'd be great.