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.

While questioning the morality of parents sending unaccompanied children to seek asylum in order to pave the way for family settlement, I question whether it's appropriate for the government to compound the vulnerability of these children by sending them still unaccompanied under an agreement that has human rights scrubbed off the agenda.

The Australian government has lost its moral compass on this one.

Poirot

Agreed.

I heard a Federal Government minister (can't remember who) try to claim that disincentives such as incarceration in Malayan refugee camps to arrival by boat is a humane approach!

I just don't understand what has happened to either main party's moral compass. There are so few arrivals by boat that could far more easily be attended to right here on the Australian mainland - as they were in the 70's and 80's, at less cost and trauma.

People in desperate circumstances will continue to flee with whatever means they can find - most have no idea of the 'solutions' applied here in Australia, they just want a chance to live. Something we Australians take very much for granted.

Raycom wrote: L.B.Loveday also ranks the rights of animals above the rights of humans.

That is an incompetent and scurrilous misrepresentation of what I wrote.

Reminds me of the dh who, when I opined that "Obama is evil" (based on his Senate voting on infantcide and without reference to his race) accused me of being "KKK".

I think it's actually a cunning strategy to dissuade asylum seekers abroad;
They read the papers or look on the television, and see clearly that most politicians (and by far the majority of published opinions and letters by regular Australian people) show the world that Australia is actually more concerned about how nicely our Hamburgers are treated before being turned into a tasty snack, than we do about the lives of refugees.
-any potential refugee would take note and think twice about coming here.

It's a new tactic many nations across Europe are waking up to in a way to discourage people they don't want coming;
-Holland advertises itself (with actual TV commercials in the middle east) as a sexually-open and expressive nation where homosexual couples kiss on the street to frighten away religious fundamentalists.
-Switzerland simply advertises blatantly that foreigners will not be treated nicely and put in great danger (again, with actual TV commercials)
-Denmark makes blasphemous cartoons.

All three of these nations are quickly becoming tremendously undesirable places for their target audience (Denmark is now the very last nation most conservative Muslims would ever want to visit according to surveys).

Apologies L.B. Loveday, but your comment was open to that interpretation.

>> I think it's actually a cunning strategy to dissuade asylum seekers abroad;
They read the papers or look on the television, and see clearly that most politicians (and by far the majority of published opinions and letters by regular Australian people) show the world that Australia is actually more concerned about how nicely our Hamburgers are treated before being turned into a tasty snack, than we do about the lives of refugees.
-any potential refugee would take note and think twice about coming here. <<

Cunning stunt indeed!

The first thing anyone fleeing for their lives should do is to read the newspapers and watch TV.

And I agree, a country that cannot even treat animals humanely is not a country I'd want to live in.

You watched the Australian cows - now see what the Malaysians do to human beings.
Asylum seekers in Malaysia are caned.Gillard boasts she can control this. Yeah, right.

Warning: this video contains explicit images of cruelty to human beings. Human beings were harmed in the filming of this video.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=5ab_1172940415

Jennifer.

Cows do not have a choice.
The parents of the children do.
Should we be responsible for the terrible behaviour of the parents and the people smugglers.
I think not.

Boo hoo I'm over it! While we have inadequate services for our own vulnerable citizens including homeless children - who would vastly outnumber any illegal 'minors' (some whom claim to be underage are anything but) I don't give a fig where they send these young people. Back to the idiotic and manipulative parents who are trying to play the system would be a good start.

I have not yet heard of an underage FEMALE - they are all male as far as my info goes (and I have 2 contacts currently working in this 'industry') The only legitimate exception in my book would be orphans aged under 16.

The more we do to discourage and make life difficult for these 'desperate' queue jumpers who pay criminals considerable money to bring them to this 'land of easy pickings' the better. As for the smugglers - don't arrest them when intercepted. Remove the passengers then blow up vessel and crew. Couple of times would be enough to put most other operators and wannabees off their game.

Problem solved.

Inhumane treatment of humans and animals to produce a humane result.

Yeah, that'll work.

Jeez! I just watched Briars link. I think 20 of the best is a tad extreme but 5 - 10 would be just the thing for some of our homegrown vandals, petty thieves, 'gangstas', repeat drink drivers/hoons, drug peddlers and other miscreants. I'd bet any money it would slow down recidivism to a mere trickle, keep prison populations in check and put the fear of the law back into many wannabee crims.

Yes - and deliver the punishment in front of the little sods coming through the juvenile system with the warning of "Next time you are caught, this is your fate". Anyone over the age of 12 - 3 strikes and you get stripes!

Maybe we should be taking on some of the 'oppressive and cruel' methods of our asian neighbours. It seems they enjoy a far lower crime rate than ours. Here it's criminals treated with kid gloves and victims hardly rate. WRONG!

Ooops pressed post button prematurely.

;)

Meant to point out that if Australians are seen to be treating their own most vulnerable; homeless, mentally ill, drug addicted, abused in a humane fashion, that will only encourage MORE people to want to come here.

Do your bit for stopping the boats - kick a child on to the streets today.

:P

Nothing to do with cows and kids.

It's all about politics and catering to Howard's battlers.

Labor is attempting to move further to the right than Howard ever did to appease the shock jock mob.

Wouldn't matter if it was budgies and bogans. As long as the moronic political duopoly could use them for political purposes they would.

Hi, I'm just reposting (more or less) this comment I put up on Jennifer Wilson's blog the other day:

These are the lengths that the government is going to to retain control of the asylum-seeker situation: not only are they denying a group of highly marginalised adults and children their human rights, they are selling out Australia's children in order to do so.

Last month there was a Senate inquiry report into whether an independent Commissioner for Children should be established – who among other things would act as guardian for unaccompanied minors. Unfortunately the committee found that there was still too much disagreement on exactly what role the Commissioner would take on, and how the position would avoid duplicating functions currently performed by the state and territory Commissioners. The recommendation was that, while there is a lot of merit in having such a Commissioner, the position shouldn’t be created at this time due to these technical difficulties.

Even though the Department of Immigration and Citizenship stated that they were aware of a perceived conflict of interest in the Minister’s joint role as both guardian and jailer, they – along with FaHCSIA and Attorney-Generals – were the only party present at the hearing to directly oppose establishing the Commissioner position, and pushed the “workability” problem for all it was worth - while the other submissions were more optimistic that a solution could be reached. Meanwhile the Minister chose not to offer a submission at all and is sticking to the line that, since the National Framework for Australia’s Children does not require a final decision on a Commissioner until September 2012, we’re all just going to have to jolly well wait until then!

So in addition to the kids in detention facing the prospect of being sent to Malaysia, the administrative “arrangements” are being manipulated to such an extent that, it appears that in order to ensure Chris Bowen maintains final say over the lives of unaccompanied minors, Australian children are being left without an independant coordinating authority, and all the benefits that could bring.

Ammonite; you do of course realize that almost every single refugee we receive actually stops over at multiple countries to make their way here?
They don't actually run and run till they come to the nearest boat at their country's border and set sail- first stop Australia; (especially considering most of these countries are surrounded by many other countries before they even find one that is not land-locked- and even then must usually pass several countries directly between their point of departure and Australia).
And in most cases they keep up with the news (particularly trying to access the news sources of the country they are trying to sneak into).

Ultimately their chances of receiving wind of some of these developments is quite high once they are outside their own country.

Children would never be placed in a vulnerable situation if parents didnt put them there. Illegal immigrant children have been exposed to slavery, serious illness or wounding or worst of all death.It isn't so much for the good of the children to have a better future which the parents can't be sure of but in the hope that if they got to Australia the refugee advocates and bleedin heart parasites would make enough noise to get them, the parents, also accepted. Then would follow application from parents to join these children. It is politicisation of the most callous and heartless kind. Children being used in the form of emotional blackmail.
In Australia children are removed from environments and put into child care and the state made custodians of the children.
Sure it is sad to see the illegals in such parlous state but please keep in mind how they came to be there.
It is NOT Australia's responsibility.

socratease

Jenny, I was brought up in very serious poverty. My mother was an unwed mother when there was no "unmarried mother's pension." She kept herself and me by working in very badly paid jobs while renting rooms from pensioners. She waited six years for a Housing Commission flat after being assessed as a person "most in need" of accomodation.

When my mother and I moved into our new flat, our total belongings consisted of a TV set, a folding card table, and an ironing board. We slept on the concrete floor.

We met our new neighbours who were British migrants. They had plenty of money, plenty of nice furniture, and they had only waited only two years for their Housing Commision flat. I will never forget what my mother said on hearing this. She said that "the bloody government thinks more about foreigners than they do their own people."

And I make that charge at you, Jennifer. You think more about foreigners than you do your own. You have no right to call yourself an "Australian" and I hereby disassociate myself of any concern I should have for your welfare. You are just another Internationalist who thinks it is smart to pee on your own people while championing every body else's people. And I might also point out that too many of those people that you are championing are a bunch of criminal ingrates who Centrelink is paying to rob us, rape us, and to sell drugs to our kids.

I see exactly the same situation of foreigners getting preferential treatment today with black families living in new houses in the St Mary's- Penrith area of Sydney, while the unemployable black fathers hang around the front of the Mt Druitt shopping centre. Meanwhile, my aged pensioner cousin and her cancer affected husband, who have both worked and paid taxes all of their lives, seek any sort of cheap accomdation in order to survive.

All of your self righteous blatherings about compassion for poor foreigners elicits two fingers full of righteous indignation from me. In Australia, Australians come first.

The question of how unaccomapnied minors find the $20,000 dollars to pay the people smugglers, seems to have been glossed over. The truth in almost every case is that their parents are paying the fee in the hope that their child will gain asylum, and then sponsor the rest of the family to come over as well.

Lets just examine that for a second. These people place their children in the hands of people smugglers, where they are vulnerable to abuse and neglect. They risk the lives of their children by sending them across the ocean in unseaworthy boats. The children then need to negotiate the asylum process, all the while living in detention with the all the violence and misery that entails. They can often wait years before they are reunited with their parents.

Why do the parents do it??

Because its a very good way of getting asylum for your family, especially if you can only raise 1 boat fare.

The bleeding heart crew, who have most vociferously opposed the processing of unaccomapnies children in Malaysia, don't care that their policies will create more suffering, and place more children in danger. They don't care that the best way of ensuring that children are not endangered in this way is to close the loophole in the system that rewards such behaviour.

It seems to me that the only solution is to

1) locate the parents of unaccompanied minors and immediately send the children back to them,
or
2) if we are unable to find them quickly, we should place them in protective care but ensure that their parents/adult siblings can NEVER get permanent residence.

Either way we deter parents from risking their childrens health, safety and emotional wellbeing in this way.