The Government and the animal righters do not show the same concern for the horrendous cruelty exercised in the abortion of unborn human babies, who feel the pain but are completely defenceless.

"The Government and the animal righters do not show the same concern for the horrendous cruelty exercised in the abortion of unborn human babies, who feel the pain but are completely defenceless."

Nor that of mice who suffer in agony for hours when the spring trap does not kill them, or rats who slowly and agonisingly bleed to death over a period of up to 2 weeks after eating common baits

It is disappointing to see that L.B.Loveday also ranks the rights of animals above the rights of humans.

Can I pull out this section of the article. It says a lot about the current crisis in our political system. Politicians should be called to account. Policy first; politics second.

"Yesterday I heard comments to the effect that if the government allows any children to stay here, rather than sending all of them to Malaysia, people smugglers will seize this opportunity to load their boats with underage cargo. Yes, that's probably true. But, the commenter went on, if there should be another Christmas Island tragedy, and a boatload of children are drowned, this will be a political catastrophe.

What struck me about his observations was that it's perfectly acceptable in Australian public discourse for anything to do with unaccompanied child asylum seekers to be framed in purely political terms. Not in human terms, involving compassion, understanding, desire to assist, and responsibility. Not in terms that prioritise moral and ethical concerns for the welfare of kids, even when they are not Australian. If child asylum seekers drown it will first be a political catastrophe for the Labor government.

The fate of politicians and their parties far outweighs any other concern"

The sole reason anything is being done about the treatment of cattle in Indonesia is that we have seen what is happening. We need to see what is happening to asylum seekers (child and adult) under Australian detention - but of course no government would want that. Out of sight is, to the non-empathetic, out of mind. Perhaps the media will be able to access the people transported to Malaysia and out of government control.

The media has had trouble gaining access to Serco establishments for a while and government has not approved filming of the premises even with agreements to protect the privacy of asylum seekers.

There have been many reports about the mental health effects of detention on children and adults over the past few years. Unaccompanied minors could easily be fostered within the Australian community until contact with parents is made and processing could begin.

According to a Lateline interview unaccompanied minors are usually sent by parents in the hope that they gain citizenship and can bring the rest of the family over at a later date. Each aslyum case would have to assessed on its own merits.

The other difficulty is in how to discourage those parents from sending their children over unaccompanied. It is obvious from all the delays in processing that more people need to be allocated to the task so that decisions can be made quickly. That can only be done where identification papers are sound, where there are no papers or fraudulent IDs the process takes much longer.