Chris Lewis:
"Squeers, I may be wrong, but i dont accept your tone about comments about the Australian electorate. I think we Australians have done a pretty good job in recent decades"

Well that's very patriotic of you, Chris, but I'm not just making innuendos, like you; you can compellingly analyse what I'm saying.
The fact is that both the major Parties have draconian asylum-seeker policies because the electorate demands it.
Ironically, the Libertarians are strictly-speaking more in favour of open borders than the socialists, because they favour a free market.
It's the true conservatives and the working classes that tend to be the most intolerant, the former for the sake of their dynasties and pieties and the latter for the sake of their jobs. The centre on this issue is dominated by both high-brow and low-brow paranoia and both parties have to try to accommodate it.
It always comes back to the electorate and not the politicians, the academics or the journalists, who are just the scapegoats.
But one shouldn't be so frank--it's "unAustralian".

Squeers, you accuse me of innuendos

Well listen to yours, supposedly the gospel truth and not beyond challenge.

"The fact is that Australian society is by and large conservative, intolerant and bigoted--provincial in a word--and it's this that makes university "look" left-wing".

Hope you've got your underwater breathing gear Chris.

You'll probably need it, when they completely cover you with arrogance.

Chris, I wouldn't get side-tracked by the term "progressive". It is essentially a marketing term, as meaningless a descriptor as Coke being "the real thing".

Most progressives are actually regressives who want to return to an alleged idyllic past where the community told individuals what they could do. In its most extreme forms it opposes all the things that make modern Australian life so great.

In one sense the "progressives" are the true conservatives in the debate.

Meanwhile Graham you consistently feature posts by right-wing or conservative Christians who specialize in telling people what they can and cant do. And who, if they had the political power, would do so. Todays posting on Euthanasia was an example of this.

The applied politics and intentions of which in the USA in particular, are described and criticized on the Media & Culture section of Alternet website. Remembering that most, if not all right-wing or conservative writers and publications here in Oz are all essentially champions of the GOP.

This essay too. http://tpjmagazine.us/adams29

Chris is absolutely spot on in regards to the intolerance leftist academics have for opposing views. I, too, have been in academia for some time and am still amazed at how they claim to be "tolerant" or "altruistic" or "empathetic," but then launch into a despicable tirade of abuse toward those that disagree with their views.
For example, the "buzzword" in academia at the moment is "equality." Question this at your own peril. Mention that men are not equal, that men have different talents and abilities, that there is a rank between man and man, and you've set yourself up for a ridicule and scorn.
Don't get me started on the nepotism.