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.