Shadow
Actually I don't care weather the government is Liberal or Labor but I do care that who ever it is does a good job. While generally leaning to the left, I come from a very conservative background.
The items I have listed above are all in some way problems if the Liberals hope to be re-elected. Probably the most serious for the Libs is the fact people like Howard’s battlers, pensioners and those lower in the social order are now worse off than when the Libs took over.

Sorry any Lib complaining about Julia lying must be suffering severe memory loss. I seem to recall Abbott saying there would be No cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, and no cuts to the ABC or SBS.

ttbn says...

**How on earth anyone can bother disussing what Labor might or might not do is beyond me. We all know that if Labor, in its current form, is ever re-elected, we will have a carbon tax, a return of illegal boat arrivals, hick-Irish homosexual "marriage", and an economy on a par with Greece's. How many attacks of Labor politics you need before the penny drops?**

My ideas entirely...great thought!

Just to add to that first posting:

There are sixty million refugees around the world, all desperate for some minimal security and comfort. And another twenty million people displaced within their own countries, in similar situations. Eighty million.

Compassion dictates that we take as many as we can, particularly those we can see, those who sort of come over the horizon. People who come in leaky boats and who have paid exorbitant fees to smugglers, mainly in Indonesia. We should take all of those poor buggers ?

So, suppose a group of desperate people are intercepted on the high seas in quite a seaworthy boat ? That would be okay ?

If the policy was changed, so that we could take people in seaworthy boats, then the next question is: what if some private international agency, funded let's say by Bill Gates, sends seaworthy boats full of people who have paid just standard fares - a few hundred dollars or so ? Should they be eligible ?

If so, then why put them to the trouble of getting on boats and travelling across thousands of miles of open sea ? Why not let people fly direct from Jakarta, having paid standard commercial fares ?

If that was okay, then why not take whoever can fly here, from anywhere ?

Isn't that the logical outcome of a policy of accepting whoever wants to come here ?

Or is there some criterion that makes them 'more eligible' - only by boat ? Only by leaky boat ? Only if they have paid exorbitant fees on a leaky boat ? Not if they come by seaworthy boats and have paid standard fares ? Not if they simply fly here ? Where's the 'compassionate cut-off' ?

Or do we only think about the situation of those coming over the horizon ? Do we try not to think of those millions of others who will never afford such a dangerous passage, languishing in vast desert ghettoes for decades ? People who have applied through all the right agencies and waited their turn ?

Terrible choices.

WA,

You forget the endless promises and outright lies that Krudd made and broke,

Krudd promised
to keep the pacific solution and boat turnbacks,
to maintain fiscal responsibility and maintain a surplus as far as possible,
grocery watch,
Fuel watch etc,

Juliar promised
No carbon tax
An East timor solution,
A citizen's assembly.
etc,

In fact I can't find any promises they kept.

Shorten/labor
Is beholden to the unions ahead of business and the 83% of workers they don't represent,
Has no new policies in 20 months (except a reformed carbon tax)
Has no plan to manage the economy,
etc.

I am disgusted at Bill Shorten's big turnaround with this subject, even though I am not a labor supporter. I doubt it will make one bit of difference to his chances at the next election anyway.

Tanya Plibersek is the only bright star in that lot, but she has even less of a chance at the top job because she is a woman, and the Australian public is still too immature to deal with female leaders.

Loudmouth, you certainly pose some difficult questions that no one wants to answer!

I would go one further than you and say what would happen if it was a seaworthy boat chartered from England, full of white Christians who had had enough of England and wanted to jump the immigration Que.?
I have a strong suspicion they wouldn't be wooshed off to Nauru.....

If we say we won't take any of these desperate people who come here by boat or plane illegally, then we should send them back where they came from and instead take an equal number of poor refugees from the worst camps in the world, such as the Muslim Rohingas?
That's only fair isn't it?
Yeah right, and pigs will fly....

Here we go again;
"reflect the continents 'place' in Asia "

Now those with geographical ignorance hear this;
You have been deluded by the walls of your primary schools.
They displayed maps of the world in Mercator's Projection.
Australia is not in Asia, Asia is on the other side of the world.
Even Indonesia is not in Asia.

The shape of the world is distorted.
The degrees of latitude in the Northern Hemisphere are larger than in the Southern Hemisphere.
The whole thing is grossly distorted but millions believe otherwise.
Have you never wondered why it takes 8 hours to fly to Singapore,
after all it is just over from Darwin !

As far as refugees or rather to speak of the majority, the emigrants,
Egypt is facing a problem of ether asking the world to pay for the
support of half their population or accept 45 million emigrants as
they can no longer feed them without charity.
The Gulf states are kicking the tin at present but as we have recently
seen even Saudi Arabia is facing a financial problem due to its budget
restrictions due to low oil prices. Gulf Charity must dry up.