Rainier: “we don't share the same history or understanding of being Australian as others. This diversity should be seen as a strength rather than a weakness!”

It certainly should be - as should the strength of our culture - Australia has always been proud of its multicultural diversity... for such a young country, we are very short-sighted.
but this again is getting away from the topic somewhat.

Rainier: “"The Great Australian Silence" continues to prevail here in this forum ---and that its logic and rationale is being applied to refugees and asylum seekers. ..Locking kids in detention centres continues this disremembering.”

Well said Rainier - there is no admittance on the government's part of wrong-doing, never-the-less an apology (sound familiar?) - the areas that they have moved the families to is no different from the main detention areas - in some respects from what I understand, it is more depressing being removed from their friends/family members, and also much more degrading. The women are allowed out into the community to go to the local supermarket, but they are escorted and only allowed to buy certain foods. The kids go to the local school, only to be teased by the other kids because they are in detention. They get locked inside their "houses" by a certain time at night. And they are still behind razor-wire fences like those that entomb the main detention centre.

But lets not forget the main reason for their removal from the main facility - the government can give it a different name. They move these people a few kilometres up the road to another facility almost identical and call it "housing" - this way they are no longer counted as part of the core "detainees" as they are no longer in Baxter. This is how the numbers get reduced.

This Government is treating us as if we are fools. Don't oblige them by becoming one. Meet with released detainees if you don't want to go to meet those still imprisoned. Make up your own mind – don’t let them tell you what to think.

Ummm...excuse me...proud of our multicultural diversity? This, is what the issue of refugees is all about. Did'nt I mention before how fake it was? Australian multiculturalism has been shoved down our throats...by big business and their lefty side-kicks.

Australians should speak their mind...and reject MULTICULTURALISM. It is not something I am proud of, seems like a reinvention of colonialism. We should resolve our issues with the Indigenous population first, before we get overconfident about our ability to absorb people from different cultures and ethnicities.

But you have revealed your true agenda, Mandi. You want to change the face of Australia. It is not about compassion for refugees, but pursuing your multicultural ambitions. Petro represents an opportunity for you to pursue this agenda.

But since diversity makes you so proud, I am a part of that diversity. And so is Pauline Hanson, Fred Nile. More to the point, anyone who doesn't share your beliefs is a part of this grand diversity you idealise!

Divergence:

Almost all of your arguments directed to me in your last post are predicated on your claim that I "believe in open borders", indeed that I'm one of those "open borders people". This might have been a reasonable platform for the case you then unfurled, except that I have said no such thing. Nor would I. The tendency of some here, like you, to assume and impute things to those you oppose, for the sake of contriving a straw argument - is lazy, discourteous and contributes nothing to discussion on an important issue. Next you redefine “refugee” as “an asylum seeker who falsely pretends to be a refugee….”. And you call me (and Rainier) the "intellectually dishonest" ones. How ironic!

But let’s put those little intellectual infractions aside for the moment… if it is dishonest to compare the asylum seeker situation now (as we stand here in year 4 of an apparently indefinite "war on terror") with the situation during the 25 year+ standoff between first- and second-world countries, make out your case. Don't just wave the Cold War around and pronounce it a trump card. What you raised amounts to no argument at all: shipping has crossed the Pacific to the US for hundreds of years, tyranny has produced outcasts and refugees for centuries and people were crossing the globe long before globalisation - so what is your point?

On your reasoning, New Zealand should have been completely overrun by now by teeming floodgates of refugees. NZ, the nation most proximate to us geographically, historically and in terms of political systems - doesn't lock people up in remote places indefinitely, doesn't design refugee management systems that cause social and psychological breakdown among children as Australia's does, doesn't take seven years to investigate refugee claims, and doesn't colonise tiny and poor Pacific nations with bribes to provide incarceration services. And NZ hasn’t been overrun. Refugees aren't storming the beaches. They're not there like a plague, comdemning millions of NZ folk to "abject poverty". Hot damn! It must be the Magic Kingdom! Who'da thunk?!

Davo, I don't think Mandi has some diabolical "true agenda" which has been ominously revealed by her postings. She is meeting with these people and seeing first hand the suffering that they are subject to - sorry where is the long bow re Fred Nile et al? They have freedom of speech? and are an import through circumstance? One of the saddest things revealed by her first hand experience is the kid's reactions to the detention children going outside the wire to schools, where they are taunted by other children - Australian children - who have no idea of what these other kids are going through. Makes you wonder about the dinner table conversation these little "Aussie battler kids" have with their parents. "Guess what! i called little Imran a dirty little asylum seeker today". I'd be washing his mouth out with something worse than KFC. But only if I could tear myself away from "Today Tonight" I just wish that we could get over this "us/them" mentality about how we treat "other" people, regardless of borders, (or for that matter, land rights) and start walking a mile or two in something other than bovver boots, without thinking the sky's gonna fall.

Arjay, your intellectual callibre is perfectly represented in the final para of your last post, in your invective directive directed to Rainier. It would indeed be a pity if any public opinion turned on such flimsy as the vain postings of an inadequate chap who prefers to attack the perso instead of facing up to the debate. What a good thing it is that people of good will can take comfort in taking a longer view.

BTW Arjay, there is no "limelight" on this website, you poor dear. There is postering by all of us, and vanity among those who choose to reveal bits (selectively) of themselves/ourselves..... RJ who? Whatever, who??

Fiona:
1. On June 8 Rainier quoted Greg Barns as saying "the distinction between asylum seeker and economic migrant is meaningless". I may have mixed up what came from Rainier and what came from Barns, but Rainier did not criticise this view, which could reasonably be described as for open borders. Although I (and others) repeatedly said that we did not want to exclude people fleeing persecution and I described the extended detention of a genuine refugee as tantamount to keeping an innocent person in prison, you described us as the sorts of monsters who would send Jews back to be killed by Hitler. You refused to entertain the possibility that an asylum seeker might not be genuine. It is true that you didn't explicitly say you wanted open borders.

2. Go back and read what I said. I said that refugees were NOT criminals. I distinguised them from illegal immigrants and those who knowingly make false asylum claims, who could reasonably be considered guilty of fraud.

3. I have checked the facts on asylum seeker numbers and refer you to the website of the Migration Policy Institute, which has published a graph showing asylum claims in 38 developed countries over the years, and to a 2004 paper by Timothy J. Hatton of the ANU "Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Policy in Europe" (available on the Web). In the early 1970s there were about 50,000 asylum claims a year in all industrialised countries. This rose to more than 850,000 in 1992. It has since come down to around 400,000 a year. The actual numbers including dependants would be larger. Hatton's paper deals with the reasons. Very large numbers of asylum claims by Third World people in the West is a recent phenomenon. Why go to New Zealand when you can get to the US for the same money?