Hi PhilipM,

Welcome to OLO.

Now, I'm not expecting to convert you - Just give you something to think about.

Below is a little snippet for ABC RN (a suitably kosher source, for those of your persuasion?). It was embedded in one the ABC's reports talking about unaccompanied minors wanting to proceed to OZ

<<GEORGE ROBERTS: Water trickles through the picturesque paddy fields of Puncak, south of Jakarta, where hundreds of villas are rented out to thousands of asylum seekers>> RN AM --Tuesday, July 23, 2013 08:03:00

Here it is again:

<GEORGE ROBERTS: Water trickles through the picturesque paddy fields of Puncak, south of Jakarta, where hundreds of villas are rented out to thousands of asylum seekers>>.

In one of your more reflective moments try and reconcile it with the generic poor-fellow-refugee story you fed Loudmouth.

Cheers!

Abbott's proposed inappropriate use of the military is a small taste of how he concerns me over keeping the military at arms length from government. If democracy is ever going to be tested in this country, it has to start somewhere. IYGYKHN.

Rudd correctly ended the turnback/tow-back policy because it was wrong to "process" asylum-seekers upon encounter at sea (i.e. deem them to be seeking illegal entry), both ethically and under the UN refugee convention. Furthermore, it didn't work anyway once boats were scuttled to invoke maritime distress provisions, and it won't work again.

The PNG solution avoids this. If it does not proceed or succeed at least in very largely (90%)reducing arrivals and refugee deaths at sea, we have no shots left in the locker.

Marilyn,
Guess who wrote this in 2006?

"Another great challenge of our age is asylum seekers. The biblical injunction to care for the stranger in our midst is clear. The parable of the Good Samaritan is but one of many which deal with the matter of how we should respond to a vulnerable stranger in our midst. That is why the government's proposal to excise the Australian mainland from the entire Australian migration zone and to rely almost exclusively on the so-called Pacific Solution should be the cause of great ethical concern to all the Christian churches. We should never forget that the reason we have a UN convention on the protection of refugees is in large part because of the horror of the Holocaust, when the West (including Australia) turned its back on the Jewish people of Germany and the other occupied countries of Europe who sought asylum during the '30s".

It was Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd and he was also mentioning Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a source of inspiration.
http://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2006/october/1330040298/kevin-rudd/faith-politics

Bonhoeffer also said "Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act".

It was Howard who let this genie out of the bottle and the conservatives have been playing the same card ever since and encouraging the worst aspects of society for their political ends.
Rudd is just trying to beat them at their own evil game.

There is absolutely nothing you can do to convince those who twist reality in order to support their own prejudices, but at least you know that you are standing up for what you know is the truth.

Marilyn, for every refugee arriving by boat one waiting for resettlement elsewhere in the world misses out. Our total immigration number is capped.

Joe's question, "So what's your 'acceptable level', Marilyn ? We all have one." deserves an answer from you, or one of your ilk, but there is only silence and vacuous sentiment in the face of the growing flood of boats and deaths that takes no account of the equity issue for those elsewhere in the world awaiting resettlement.

If you believe we should dissolve the immigration cap and throw open Australia to anyone who can get here, via any mode of transport, just say so. But no, you and your ilk are silent on that to avoid defending your position.

Australia will raise its cap to resettle more refugees and has arranged for our neighbour, PNG ( and possibly others), to do likewise. So stop telling us what horrible people we are and take your own advice, just grow the hell up and shut up.

Well said Luciferase.

Forget PNG, it's just a distraction, a sideshow. When I left PNG at the end of '76 (post Independence) it was already sliding into an a-hole, and has been on the skids ever since. Lovely people mind you, but suffering a bad case of 'future shock'. It can't look after its own affairs (yet), let alone help-out good old colonial Oz.
(And, Indonesian interests are hovering, just over a 'constructed' border. Lovely, hospitable, caring Indonesia.)