Susan M.

Have you taken lessons from Rudd?

You didn't answer my question.

I'll put it another way. Since there are 'officially' 16 million refugees and another 21 million internally displaced persons worldwide, according to a 2009 UNHCR estimate, do you think we should accept them all if they all turned up at Christmas Island seeking refuge?
Or at what point do you become unchristian and say no more ... enough?

A straightout simple numerical will suffice as an answer?

I sincerely think we should increase our intake annually but am realistic to realise we cannot take them all. So I'd put a cap probably higher than 20,000 but at a point experts would assure us the very nature of our society wouldn't change substantially. ie that we'd still be a country the could absorb refugees but wouldn't have our standard of living fall all too dramatically . After all, the things that makes us an attractive destination are our social codes and lifestyles. Features being our diversity, tolerance and slow acceptance of and adaption to change.

Your article, because I'd put a limit on numbers, suggests I'm according to your views, unchristian and uncaring about 'those pushed away from our shores'... which by necessity must occur at some point.

I'm in favour of debate, constructive debate, on this issue and abhor the name-calling and abusive tactics just as much as I abhor the scare-mongering.

I think we'd all be better off adopting our usual Australian ways. We could perhaps calmly confront the issue from a point of view of limits. ie Discussing at what point we can rationally and fairly say with a clear conscience ... enough!

Regards Keith

Oh and I do admire your passion.

Grim... you are a silly aren't you?

"What if it's simply a bad law... should we still be stoning to death adulterous women? Burning witches?"

Of course we should. The Good Book was writ once, is true, unchanging, and must be obeyed at all times, without fear or favour, with no accounting for changed times and conditions.

It is The Truth, and cannot be deviated from, just ask Graham Y and all the others here.

There can be no 'bad law' when it is WRIT.

The Good News is just that, good news.

And those who cause men to sin, must be stoned to death, particularly when they are women.

This is the lurv of God, brought to you via His only Son being nailed to a bloody cross at the Pagan festival of Easter....lucky how things work out sometimes isn't it?

Do get with it Grim.... or you'll never understand the lurv of God.

Australia's refugees compared to the rest of the world between 1990 and 2008 -

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/2009/04/17/why-andrew-bolt-should-be-sodomised-with-a-calculator-–-part-142/

Looks pretty similar, despite all the spin.

Figures for boat arrivals since the implementation of the pacific solution:

2002–03
0 Boats
0 People

2003–04
3 Boats
82 People

2004–05
0 Boats
0 People

2005–06
8 Boats
61 People

2006–07
4 Boats
133 People

2007–08
3 Boats
25 People

2008–09
23 Boats
1033 People

2009–10 (to 10 March 2010) 7 months
64 Boats (projected 110)
3011 People (projected 5162)

The way it is going the financial year 2010 /11 will have the highest number of illegal boat entries ever. A new Rudd record.

At what point will Rudd 'fess up and admit that this is not the "small" increase due to push factors that he said we might see?

The "wasteful" Pacific solution is looking far far cheaper than the flood we have now.

From BBC news.
More than a third of species assessed in a major international biodiversity study are threatened with extinction, scientists have warned.
These included 21% of all known mammals, 30% of amphibians, 70% of plants and 35% of invertebrates.
At what point will society truly respond to this growing crisis?
Professor Jonathan Baillie,
Zoological Society of London.
This is caused entirely by the increase in Human Population!
50% of these were in AUSTRALIA.

TBC, Grim

Christian values are extremely malleable - for others to criticise this useful 'quality' are wrong and maybe avenged by deletion and suspension by devout Christians working in God's name. Similar logic, therefore, is applied to asylum seekers, who may or may not be Christian, or even worse Muslim, or worst of all - non-religious.

I am indeed full of the love and tolerance of the Christian, such as when my post on the Obama thread was deleted by GY for suggesting that "he who is without sin may cast the first stone" apparently this is 'flaming' if uttered by a self-confessed atheist.

According to our Christian moderator, non-religious people are basically Stalinists and to blame for every communist atrocity ever committed, despite the fact that non-religious people have existed since the beginning of homo sapiens either 6000 or 100's of thousands of years ago depending upon your 'malleability'.

Wonder how long this post will last - it is on topic, it is an honest reflection on the behaviour of SOME Christians, but it is a bit critical of double standards applied to Christian and non-religious posters.