I am sick of people who ran away from their own country, came to Oz for thier own advantage, were allowed to come in, & given every opportunity to prosper, getting on their high horse, & telling us what's wrong with us, & how to run our country, & lives.

These people who have not even touched the surface of life in Oz, should have chosen somewhere else, if Oz is so bad.

People who helped to stuff up their country of origan have no qualification to tell others how to live.

I am particularly sick of this blokes whining. Just who the hell does he think he is. Any sewers around here are in his mind. Funny isn't it, how some people can find what ever they look for. I guess with him, it takes one to know one.

What'd I tell yer'?

Reading what Bruce Haigh blathers about anything is not worth reading, but the poster, Stephanie Cornwall, needs to bone up on the facts.

It IS illegal to try entering any country having destroyed identity documents. It is illegal to enter any country without a passport - and a visa if you come from certain countries. There is no immunity from the law for so-called asylum seekers.

The boats do not have to sneak in undetected. They DELIBERATELY find naval vessels to guide them to Christmas Island.

There is the potential for terrorists to be among them, even though most of them are merely country-hopping economic migrants. Their lack of ID, the ineptitude of our immigration officials, and the advertised lack of deterrents to come here illegally mean that we don’t have a clue what type of person is being let into Australia.

The number of illegal arrivals is irrelevant with regard to our sovereignty. But, even so, the number has drastically increased under the Labor Government since their complete abandonment of any pretence to protect our borders.

There is a queue which the illegals are jumping. There are UN stations in all of the countries they pass through. They don’t try for asylum in these stop-over countries because the UN standards would show them not to be genuine refugees, so they carry on to the soft touch of Australia; leaving, it should be added, thousands of UN-processed refugees in camps for good, because the illegals are taking up the quota.

Stephanie Cornwell, who appears completely disinterested in a fair and orderly way of taking in refugees, asks for “leadership” from politicians. How naïve can she be? Politicians do what is politically advantageous for themselves. And, they are not there to lead, they are there to serve. Rudd toadied to the Left by giving up on border protection; Abbott says he will get back to something the majority approved of, and we have yet to see what the new PM will do. It seems that she will not rubber stamp Rudds failures.

............and etc.,

Having lived in countries in South America, Europe and Asia I can vouch for what Bruce states. Australia unfortunately is very racist.

Australia's racism is pervasive, sneaky and underhand. It is so pervasive that a very large number of Australians simply do not see it. Having said that, I also realize that it is overwhelmingly due to utter ignorance and lack of imagination.

For the hysterical border protection mob. Think a bit outside the racist square. For a country that prides itself on a fair go, being innovative and daring, aren't those who are sick and tired of being pushed around by do-gooders in UN refugee camps, those who take matters in their own hands and at great risk and daring make their way here already Australian? I think they show some quintessential Australian characteristics.

Since when is it Australian to stand meekly in teeny tiny queues that obviously are in no way going to cope even remotedly with the numbers? No way would Australian's interior ever be traversed if Australians were a meek obedient waiting for hand outs and directives bunch.

Australia has some 200,000 people come here permanently every year. We have no idea about their character except that they have skills that Australia couldn't be bothered teaching/training their own to do or have so much money that they can buy their way in as 'business' migrants. At least I know that the boat people are winners and fighters for whom a dip in the housing market or a financial rumble in the stock market will not constitute a major crisis of confidence and fear.

Yes but it is impossible to avoid racism anywhere in the world.

We will all recall the plight of Kenyan and Ugandan Indians, dispossessed and exiled in the 1970 by the excesses of rampant racism.

the Middle east is full of racism and the religious equivalent of racial intolerance practiced by dominant Muslim cultures

Before that we will recall the separation of India into India and the two Pakistans in 1948, for what was largely religious based intolerance but an intolerance no different to racial intolerance.

We have seen Mugabe apply racist and tribalism bias and wreck the Zimbabwe economy in the process.

Similar discolorations seem to affect Fiji.

Certainly what happens in Australia is far less racist in content or intent than say the affirmative action initiatives of USA (which were a central cause of the US banking crisis of recent years) or the upheavals in the European Balkans or all other continents, for that matter.

What passes for “racism” in Australia is an individual thing, not an institutionalised state of the nation and as such, when people are free to make choices, some will make less acceptable ones but better they are free to make personal choices than live in a state of fear of the consequences for daring to express a view contrary to the accepted opinion of some political caucus.

Like several other posters, I consider this article to be a load of misguided, self-loathing rubbish, which would have been better left unwritten.