thank goodness for CJ. I thought this was a forum for informed opinion - the articles are ok but many of the comments are disgusting. Susan Metcalfe has been criticised by the radical left for not being radical enough and for not distorting the truth. People on here don't know what they are talking about and they are just making up lies, it is very nasty and I will not be back.

Morgan is good at playing with bulldust –and if you don’t know him well you might be mislead into thinking he is something he is not .

1) Firstly, he plays the old “decency and humanity [ and ] respect” card, but take a look at his opening lines, this is how he is refers to his fellow Australians “wingnut” “ litany of lies, bigotry and distortion” and if you read some of his other posts you’ll find a lot worse— rather strange from someone trading on high ideals.

2) Then he plays the suffering card “ Their continued detention after being found to be bona fide refugees sent more than a few of them nuts”
But this is him in an earlier thread http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3715#90014
Note this part: “They should cut their losses, withdraw and leave the Afghans to sort themselves out. It'll be messy, but it's inevitable “
He had absolutely no qualms about the death and mayhem such an action would bring ---but he wants us to believe he is concerned about the mental anguish some asylum seekers may have suffered through incarceration ( and it's even more unbelievable when you realise their conditions would have been much better than many less well off Australians) ?

3) Likewise, Morgan knows full well that the approving of asylum seeker claims –particularly during the latter stages of the Nauru processing ---just after the election of a new govt in Aust, who wanted to quickly defuse the issue ---had more to do with politics than any genuine assessment of their merit –yet he still dishonestly try’s on the old line “ They're not ‘illegal’s’ and virtually all of the detainees imprisoned on Nauru were granted permanent residency eventually.”

No KING KONG, CJ Morgan is no Ann Darrow…And he ain’t the messiah either …he's a very naughty boy!

Gregory G... "Anything ... is a call to arms for the extreme right" ? :)

ur kidding 'right' ?

I guess that means most Aussies ARE 'right wing extremists' because Labor polling has clearly shown what the electorate are thinking, and Labor is not ignoring that polling.

Susan Metcalfe is a 'REFUGEE ADVOCATE' she is looking after her own political and possibly financial backyard.

Maybe she is even a communist or a watermelon?

Why reinvent a solution to replace a solution which clearly worked in the first place.

The former Liberal “Pacific Solution” worked fine

Because some whining refugee advocate thinks differently, who cares.

I can see Gizzard will choke on implementing it, having criticised its success in the past... but hypocrisy has been a hallmark of socialism for decades so she should not have too much trouble to swallow her pride and implement it again

And the liberals can simply say – we told you so – and reopen the facility which we paid for in the first place

As for being “inhuman” – RUBBISH

One alternative would be to blow the boats up and leave the passengers to swim, that would be “inhuman”

but

It is not Australia’s fault it people put themselves “in harms way” by unilaterally deciding to sail from safe havens in Malaysia or Indonesia into the turbulent ocean to get to Australia and the prize of a superior economic lifestyle, paid for with Australian Taxpayer funds.

To those who believe thaqt simply floating on the ocean is justification to subvert Australian Migration laws, this is simple -

the participatory notion “There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation”

still holds true

Divergence

Governance, media freedom and civil rights seem marginally better in East Timor, and it is signatory to the UN convention on refugees, so conditions there may be marginally better than Nauru. But I see the East Timor proposal as little different to the Nauru one, and I do not agree with either.

Both Divergence and Stern say that the “Pacific solution” was a “success”. But how do we measure success?

It cost millions of dollars – almost certainly more than it would have cost to process refugees in Australia. So it wasn’t a success in terms of economic efficiency.

Almost all of the people detained were found to have legitimate claims, and most were settled in Australia. So it wasn’t a success in preventing arrivals from entering the country.

So, the only sense in which it would be deemed a “success” is if it deterred prospective refugees for seeking asylum in Australia.

This is open to debate.

Granted, arrival numbers dropped once the policy was implemented, but asylum seeker claims worldwide dropped at the time because of improving conditions in source countries. It is likely that arrivals would have decreased anyway.

Furthermore, I would disagree that the policy can be deemed a “success” even if it was effective in deterring refugees.

Prolonged detention of innocent people without trial, in physical conditions that would be unacceptable in Australia, with limited healthcare and without media scrutiny, legal protections, or NGO support, is unacceptable. To deliberately inflict such mistreatment on innocent people, most of whom have already suffered persecution and worse, in order to provide an example and deterrent to others is cruel and unethical. This is not my definition of "success."

Rhian re - But how do we measure success?

The Liberal “Pacific Solution” stopped, dead the incentive for people to jump on to leaky boats

Arguing about changes in number of people seeking illegal migration is a farce.

The socialist policy was so relaxed it encouraged illegal smuggling operations and thus created the problem the Liberal Pacific Solution had, previously prevented.

Re- So it wasn’t a success in terms of economic efficiency.

It is my personal experience, nothing any government does is ever a success in “terms of economic efficiency” – it would need to be a private company to run it if that is going to be your yardstick....

But that said, the Liberals have been proven to be far better economic managers than Socialists, who don’t even try, hence Rudd squandering of the government surpluses and plunging Australia into debt in an orgy of failed policies, handouts and ministerial incompetence on a scale rarely seen.

Re -To deliberately inflict such mistreatment on innocent people, most of whom have already suffered persecution and worse, in order to provide an example and deterrent to others is cruel and unethical

The unethical bit is someone who unilaterally demands entry to Australia, on the basis they are an economic refugee looking for an enhanced lifestyle.

Like millions of others, I had to apply for a visa and jump through hoops and be tested for suitability before I got here

I see no justification for that to change simply because someone has lied about their origins, destroyed their passport and paid a lot of money to a people smuggler to get here through an illegal route.

and the circumstances of their confinement - is doubtless alot more hospitable to the ones they left behind, be that a refugee camp or some peasant village in the middle of nowhere... it is a fraud to compare such accommodations to any hotel in any Australian city.