"To inflict suffering on one group of people in order to deter others is a clear case of appealing to a doubtful end to justify evil means. It is ethically wrong because it treats persons as things, subjects as objects. To do this is wrong no matter whether a government or an individual is acting."

Yes, true. The flaw in your argument Andrews is that you ignore the fact that government policy is enforced against those who don't agree with it, so you're not applying your own argument to yourself.

The policy on asylum-seekers under the Convention - the basis of the stinking hypocrisy you rightly criticise - is funded by threatening to inflict suffering, and inflicting suffering, on Australians who don't agree with it, to force them to pay. It is ethically wrong because it treats people as things, mere instruments of the will of others.

"Those who call advocates for asylum seekers bleeding hearts usually dismiss ethical arguments."

Support for the UN Convention is also based on dismissing ethical arguments. E.g. the cost of processing one application by so-called Irregular Maritime Arrivals - boat people - is hundreds of thousands of dollars, close to a million. Whereas the same money spent on refugees applying offshore, could alleviate *a lot* more human suffering.

The effect of the Convention is to select, not in favour of the most meritorious cases, but in favour of the seaworthy.

Australia's adherence to the Convention is the cause of major injustices, not to mention waste and legalised corruption, like all the refugee workers flown around and staying in hotels, all to keep up appearances with the UN.

There can be no pretence that the Convention somehow represents an ethical priority.

The solution to the ethical problem you suppose is for Australia to abrogate the Convention. The gumment could then set the conditions and numbers of accepting asylum-seekers on merit, which is what both parties are trying to do by this elaborate and dishonest charade of continuing on the Convention, but shunting them off into indefinite detention.

"in the case of asylum seekers, the ethical question emerges clearly from the shape of Australian policy. This policy rests on deterring people from making a claim on Australia for protection from persecution."

I disagree. Australia has an ordered approach to those seeking asylum through the correct channels. People coming by boat are seeking to circumvent those channels and are paying a lot of money to do so.

These people, for the most part, are not asylum seekers in the true sense of the words, rather they are seeking to immigrate to a better country through the back door (as in the case of the young man recently murdered).

Would you allow a large, well muscled man with a buzz cut into your home if you had no idea as to his indentity or background? (Search out some photos of some of these people) I wouldn't. Yet these people are arriving on our northern shores without idenification and demanding to be let in.

When labor came to office there were 4 people in offshore detention. In the ensuing years in excess of 50,000 arrived (and most without any papers). These people need to processed for medical checks and have their indentities verified. A rather large (and expensive) task.

Thankfully, we now are not topping up the numbers in these camps and the people who are there will probably be processed more quickly.

The bleeding hearts caused 'unintended consequences' of 1200 dead at sea, as well as multi-billion dollars of costs to innocent Australians from illegal immigration and welfare money for the parasite class they created.

The families of victims should sue them for the suffering they caused by failing to consider obvious consequences their self-indugence.

'Bleeding hearts' take no responsibility for costs or deaths; they preen themselves as acting from some moral high ground, but dont see that killing people via forseeable consequences of stupid actions is morally culpable. Now in classic faeces-flinging-monkey behaviour they scream their moral abuse at the Coalition - for stopping the killing!

Somehow they dont see themseves as vile human beings.

A well written article Andrew.
I certainly see your point in the main, although I don't really see the point of bringing the Catholic religion into the debate, other than the fact that several of our key political figures are Catholic.

To my mind, the fact that we are sending these asylum seekers away to Manus Island (a somewhat dubious detention centre) before their legal cases as genuine refugees are even known, is not ethical.

I agree we need to stop the drownings, but given the extreme lengths that this Government is going to to keep everything a 'secret', do we actually know the drownings aren't still happening?
No, we don't.

Certainly, far less boats would be setting out at this time of the northern monsoons anyway, so let's see what happens after about the end of April.
Mind you, we won't be told about anything that is going on then anyway!

I am wondering at the exorbitant cost of transferring and maintaining all these people on Manus Island anyway. Are we really saving any money?

What of all these high tech orange 'lifeboats', costing many thousands of dollars each, being tossed up on foreign beaches, and thus 'gifted' to Indonesia, after we send back asylum seekers?

We are the laughing stock of other nations and are getting a bad name for our treatment of the world wide problem of ever increasing numbers of travelling refugees.

If that worry means I am a 'bleeding heart', then so be it.

I would rather have that than a heart of stone...

Andrew different people will use the term in different ways. I wasn't aware of the catholic connection.

The way I've understood the term to be used is a little different to what you describe.

I've understood the term as implying someone who acts with a form of compassion without real consideration (or in deliberate denial) of the larger consequences of that action.

As an example
Those who would put the suffering of a serial rapist or child abuser due to prolonged incarceration ahead of the harm suffered by potential future victims when the indications are that the offender is not cured or genuinely reformed.

A bleeding heart in my view is someone who acts from a very blinkered form of compassion rather than striving for the best overall outcome while accepting that there is often no perfect solution.

In regard to the refugee issue it is a difficult one. I wish we had the political leadership and creativity to find better solutions, solutions that did not leave our doors open for others to bring the problems of their origins here but was still able to act with compassion. The existing polarisation of the debate does not appear to provide much hope of creative solutions.

R0bert

Dear R0bert,

<<A bleeding heart in my view is someone who acts from a very blinkered form of compassion rather than striving for the best overall outcome while accepting that there is often no perfect solution.>>

The conclusion as if there is no perfect solution is derived from the idea that everyone's solution must be the same and everyone should strive for the same goal(s). If that were the case, then indeed there would be no solution fitting all and one would have to compromise on some elusive "overall outcome".

Still, for each and every one of us there is a perfect solution, only it differs from person to person (and at times even for the same person at different periods of their life).

Everyone should follow their own duty - and if one doesn't know what their duty is, then their duty is to listen within and find it. Some people's duty involves protecting society from harmful elements while others' duty involves compassion for the souls of those who harm, yet even those souls who are perceived to do harm may also be carrying their own duty... A perfect world would occur if everyone followed their own duty and not that of others.

You're talking to the wall, Mr Hamilton.

>>'Bleeding hearts' see it as something that we owe to our fellow human beings by virtue of the fact that they are human and in pain. It is a natural expression of a shared humanity.<<

That argument won't get you very far on this Forum. There's a phrase somewhere that covers it nicely... ah, yes, here it is.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=I%27m%20all%20right%20Jack!

"Narrow-focus, narrow-gauge pseudo-Darwinian selfishness glorified as a sensible philosophy of society and life."

That seems to cover most of the comments so far, does it not.

When given the choice of identifying with a culture of comfort and prosperity or identifying with humanity at large, there's only one way to go.

Right?

Yuyutsu I don't think it's that simple. Not a big fan of the term "bleeding heart" or it's travelling companion "do gooder", both with similar conetations in the way they are used.

If the combination of your access to ability to act and your sense of duty lead you to contibute to the release of someone from prison with a known history of serious abuse of others and that person then uses the freedom to assault and perhaps kill an innocent it's in no way a step closer to a perfect world.

How responsible for the consequences should the person be who's duty it is to contribute to a situation with fairly predicatable and not easily avoidable adverse consequences for others?

R0bert

Dear R0bert,

Now it takes wisdom to differentiate between one's duty and one's desires and sentiments, but IF your duty is to release someone from prison, then it is not better or worse than the prison-guard's duty to try keeping that prisoner in: each of you should concentrate on his/hers.

Doing one's duty cannot cause adverse results, but of course it is still possible for others to conceive of the results as "adverse" by their own judgement - "adversity" is a relative term and it is never possible for one to make everyone else happy simultaneously.

Sorry for being brief - I have to go, but I'll be back on Sunday.

The long and short of it is that the "Bleeding Hearts" have blood on their hands, in a Vanity Festival they knowingly killed 1200 plus (2000+?). By their wilful indifference to the established hazards of an immigration program based on leaky boats they are accused; by their silence when drownings were escalating they are accused; by their flippent dismissals such as SH-Y's "tragedies happen, accidents happen" they are accursed.

Every time a bloody "Bleeding Heart" raises their voices in an own ovation, point out that the blood in not from a bleeding heart, but dripping from their hands.

The first point wrong with Andrew Hamilton's rant, is that he and his bleeding heart liberal friends consider themselves to be the font of all that is good and holy. This implies that the majority of Australians are beyond the pale when it comes to moral values, a presumption which most Australians consider an insult. Next falsehood is his claim that people should not let our government "do whatever it likes" which completely avoids the fact that the democratically elected government of Australia is doing exactly what is expected of them by the overwhelming majority of the electorate.

Andrew appears to be yet another liberal who thinks that his own people are greedy, selfish peasants that any poor person from the third world who wants to come to Australia and live with us should immediately do so, and that the greedy Australians he despises should not object. This makes him a virtuous person as opposed to those crass, consumerist, working class suburbanites that he and his fringe group are so superior to. And then he wonders why ordinary Australians despise him and his fringe group liberals and why we are becoming increasingly inoculated the their customary anti Australian blatherings.

Always being opposed to the interests of the Australian people is a position not likely to win friends and influence people outside of the cloistered halls of academia and the ABC, with their reflexive anti establishment inbred views

<<This implies that the majority of Australians are beyond the pale when it comes to moral values>>

It doesn't.

First, the majority of Australians never had a chance to express their views on the matter of asylum seekers, or in fact on any other issue.

The Australian electoral system is a farce. It doesn't allow citizens to be represented and at most allows them a slight influence on the ONE issue that matters for them most, that's if they are lucky enough to have their home positioned in the right neighbourhood that has a "marginal seat".

In my case, that ONE issue was the NBN - it has to be stopped and so I gave my [compulsory] preference to Tony Abbott. This doesn't imply that I agree with his "stop the boats" policy!

Second, it's logically wrong to imply that those with different views/preferences are morally deficient. Were the people of either Lilliput and Blefuscu immoral for breaking their eggs on the smaller or larger sides respectively?

<<Next falsehood is his claim that people should not let our government "do whatever it likes" which completely avoids the fact that the democratically elected government of Australia is doing exactly what is expected of them by the overwhelming majority of the electorate.>>

Rubbish. The government does whatever it likes because it has the power to do so, backed by the armed power of the police, not because the majority of Australians ever agreed to it. The majority of Australians were never even asked whether they agree with the concept of government or with the Australian constitution: all they are allowed is to select every three years between the twins, Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

<<Always being opposed to the interests of the Australian people>>

There is no such thing as "the interests of the Australian people": different people have different interests - and there's nothing wrong with it!

In this particular issue of refugees, obviously Sydney-siders don't want them and obviously Tasmanians do. Then why not allow refugees to come and settle in Tasmania, with visas that prevent them from crossing the Bass strait?

What is lacking from this "bleeding heart" is any sympathy for the 200-300 people dying every year under Labor's border protection disaster.

The deterrents put in place by labor to stop the carnage of the PNG solution and Nauru were in place when the boat people commenced their journey, and not to follow through would send a signal to the people smugglers to start their grim trade again.

The Coalition should be applauded, as their interception and turn arounds have stopped the illegal boats and the need to send any more economic refugees to PNG or Nauru.

SM,

Brilliant!

So we imprison people in brutal ill-equipped concentration camps, fail to protect them...to save others from drowning.

Warms the cockles, it does.

Pull the other one, I'm mightily sick of apologists for the brutality of OSB pulling out this "get out of gaol free card" - as If Morrison and his supporters give two hoots about drownings.

It was all about electoral gain and appeasing Australia's xenophobia.

When was the last time you heard Morrison refer to one of these people as a person?

They're either "boat arrivals", "detainees", transferees" or whatever.

Reza Barati when straight from being "the transferee" to being "the deceased".

Dear SM,

<<What is lacking from this "bleeding heart" is any sympathy for the 200-300 people dying every year under Labor's border protection disaster.>>

People have a right to drown themselves.

Australia has no right to behave like pirates and "save" them from what is not just a risk, but almost a certainty when one deliberately sets out to the open ocean on an inadequate leaky boat.

The problem is that Australia, the nanny state, treats its own citizens in the same manner - it would do practically anything and at any cost to save people's [biological] lives, but nothing to preserve their dignity which makes this life worth living.

P,

Your complete lack of compassion for the nearly 2000 people that died from Labor's stuff up of a border policy says it all.

These detention centers, all of which were set up by Labor, are by international standards comparatively well equipped and run. The brutality is entirely a figment of your imagination. Every single detainee is free to leave at any point, but not to Australia.

OSB, and the turning back of boats, which you amongst many left whingers claimed was impossible, has not resulted in a single significant injury, and is resulting in the detention centers slowly emptying.

SM,

"Your complete lack of compassion for the nearly 2000 people that died from Labor's stuff up of a border policy says it all."

The esteemed Shadow Minister trumpets his "faux compassion" (ie, real unconcern).

"These detention centers, all of which were set up by Labor, are by international standards comparatively well equipped and run. The brutality is entirely a figment of your imagination..."

Wow!....my imagination is stupendous. It believes reports of an attempted massacre on Manus (despite Morrison's initial attempt at spin - too many witnesses) and other reports concerning conditions on Manus - and Nauru...where we merrily imprison children.

BTW, we wouldn't know about any significant injuries or deaths because of OSB secrecy...

Secrecy being a state which usually begets abuses.

P,

Your faux concern for the 2000 people "murdered" by Labor says to everyone that you are happy for people to die as long as they are killed by the "right" people.

Yes your imagination is stupendous especially if it believes reports of an attempted massacre on Manus, that do not exist, and leads you to say "we wouldn't know about any significant injuries or deaths because of OSB secrecy..." when commenting on a report on a death and injuries.

Really Poirot, pick up your game, your posts sound delusional.