Dear Bren,

<<If we close the offshore detention centres, be prepared for a renewed flow of boat people and more deaths at sea.>>

So what's wrong with that?

If people choose to go sailing the wide ocean in inappropriate leaky boats, then they should be ready to take the consequences. If that happens, then we have nothing to be ashamed of, then it wouldn't be our hands killing them or detaining them, then it's them versus nature.

[Sock puppet]

One thing about which we should rightly scream loud and long is the total detachment of cabinet from the realities of life's moral guidelines.
Who designed the structure and implementation of the immigration detention policy?
Which jumped-up little bureacrats were given the job of running and controlling it?
Where is the awareness and understanding of the needs and humanity of people who are asking for help?
We seem to be whining constantly that others less lucky than we, plea for this land to become their home.
Throw out immigration restriction, throw open our doors, and throw out the sub-humans who try to run our country, and stuff it up in the process. Then we can look in the mirror and regain a little respect for what we see.

Again these horrible horrible people are incapable of looking after their children. Keeping the camp clean and themselves properly fed. Apparently they expect liveried servants to wait on them and their scum lawyers.
Lawyers were earning a million dollars a week from us taxpayers and then whining it is all for the good of humanity.
Start making these people do everything for themselves and when they will not co-operate use that as the reason for them being deported.
A tribunal of taxpayers to decide whether they are genuine. Lawyers allowed to observe but only if they pay us to do so.
That would stop this nonsense dead in it's tracks.

Could somebody please explain to me what is SOOO incredibly terrible about the author writing a (gasp!) emotional article?

From the comments here you'd think she just farted in a crowded lift or confessed to being a paedophile? Does the macho commentariat here ever stop to consider that this is a subject that long ago lost all capacity for rational reasoning or logical discourse?

All that is left is emotion. When dealing with this tragic subject, I for one will trust my feelings over my 'cognitive' faculties any day.

Keep screaming, Kathryn.

Hamas has shown that it is very willing to offer children as sacrifices in the form of human shields. To send kids in leaky boats would be minor in comparsion if they thought they could join hundreds or thousands more cheating on our welfare system. Wake up Australia!