The only leadership lacking is Gillard's and her dysfunctional Government. The Australian people do have a morality unsurpassed by anyone in our region. We once had leaders who reflected that. Now we don't.

As for the boats, it needs to be emphasied to the Indonesians that it is in their interest to help 'turn back the boats', as it was last time.

Australias current policies are acting as a magnet. They have not only drawn 20,000 people to Australia but have also drawn many times that number into Indonesian. Where they are a blight for the Indonesians and because of their Muslim undercurrents they cannot throw them out. They need a deterrent. That is a major problem for the Indonesians and they blame our government's policies for that predicament.

Turning boats back will be effective with Indonesian help. With a firm and persuasive Australian leadership it would be an all to persuasive argument for the Indonesians not to accept. It solves our problem andf theirs.

Shipping a few hundred to Malaysia won't change anything for the Indonesians.

I often wonder where our expert's and our journalist's brains are? IO know labor and their spruikers don't have any.

We do not get to send away asylum seekers, full stop. And we are certainly in no position to lecture anyone about ethics considering our love of wars that produce those refugees.

Duncan forgot one teensy little thing about East Timor though - our 24 years of utter silence while Indonesia slaughtered 180,000 people or starved them to death while Fraser and Peacock recognised the illegal occupation and our defence of East Timor in 1999 was no such thing, we didn't want them to have independence at all, just some form of autonomy.

Rewriting history does not help.

And with a constitution that is still frankly racist against all but white people we can't claim any high moral ground anywhere.

Former leaders might have invested heavily in human rights laws and conventions but we just threw them all straight in the bin.

Marilyn Shepherd,
What do you suggest should done to stem the flow of refugees to Indonesia ?

Marilyn Shepherd
<We do not get to send away asylum seekers, full stop. And we are certainly in no position to lecture anyone about ethics considering our love of wars that produce those refugees.

Millions of refugees are running from wars that aren’t caused by the West.

The Sri Lankan refugees (the Tamils) were running from 20years of fighting the Sri Lankan government and the Sri Lankan people for a Separatist Tamil State in Sri Lanka, which is a bit rich since they were accepted as migrants into Sri Lanka 200years or more ago. They wanted to carve off a piece of Sri Lanka for themselves to rule once they had enough numbers. This is Tribal Territorial Warfare and that is what the biggest percentage of refugees are running from as well as famine in overpopulated countries.

Timor is another example of Tribal Territorial Warfare.

Afghanistan is another example of TTW with the Pakistani Taliban coming over the border into Afghanistan and trying to take control of Afghanistan and the Afghanistan people.

Palestine is another example of 100’s of thousands of refugees, this time the Jewish tribe flooding into a country peopled by the Palestian Tribe. We can all see the result of this mass inflow of one tribe onto another tribes territory can’t we? A bloody
territorial dog fight that could yet plunge the world into World War three.

If I had more space I could point out how World War1 and World War2 started out with acts of aggression and violence between 2tribes over territory and how various countries because of alliances were pulled in to those disputes, causing two major world wars, but that would take another post.

Why do you want to set up those same tribal situations here when it is clear that this is causing ethnic cleansing and civil wars across the world resulting in many of the refugees who have been driven from their homes and land

You don't have the right to dictate that millions of Australians should jeopardize the future of their children by accepting all refugees.

"And with a constitution that is still frankly racist against all but white people we can't claim any high moral ground anywhere."

Complete and utter drivel.

The constitution is NOT racist:

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3796992.html

The proposed amendment to the Constitution will, however, make the Constitution racist:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/constitutional-fiddling-brings-inherent-danger/story-e6frgd0x-1226217634091