I must run to the defence of my new found friend Inkeemagee2 - who cares if he can spell if he likes me!

And what happened, after the SIEV X snak, to the "hundreds if not thousands" of people clinging to the shores of Indonesia waiting to come here - they were never there banjo - there has never been a humna tsunami waiting to flood our shore or despoil our way of life.

And no we cant agree on the lax border control proposition BD - their is nothing wrong with border control - but border control and then persecution should not go hand in hand

Pssst Inkee.

Col can't spell either, he just thinks he is too clever for us :}

Take yourselves back five years; it is now 1600hours, Thursday 19 2001.
Four hundred and twenty one souls (PII's) are now in the water. It will be some 19 hours before rescue comes.
Most cannot swim and will drown quickly.
If you haven't read Tony Kevin's book by now, I suggest you spend some idle hours to read it.

Hedgehog, you flatter yourself if you think those (metaphoric) tiny spines are sufficient to get under my skin.

I guess you will have to be content in the realization that, when all is said and done, you have squarely placed yourself in the category of having all the effectiveness and influence and presence of a “little prick”.

Ludwig

The term low-security detention was yours. I assumed that you knew what it meant. All I am doing is questioning your argument that there is a serious danger of absconding. I am saying that if that happens in a few cases that is better than the awful high security detention that these people are now suffering.

The principal that our society is based on is that is that it is better to allow a guilty man to go free than to hang an innocent one.

Logic, the high-security detention regime evolved in Australia from an initial centre in Port Hedland with no walls or fences. Abscondment, escape, violation of due process or whatever you want to call it, was the direct cause of the development of razor-wire-lined detention centres.

Even in those centres, vehement attempts were made to break out.

Now, how are we going to know which asylum seekers are a flight risk and which aren’t? We can’t know. So they all need to be placed in the same secure detention environment. Even if we could somehow tell, there would be issues if we started treating people differently. And to have some people outside of detention or in low-security centres and some behind high walls and razor wire could be seen as very different and prejudicial treatment. The principle that they all be treated equally is highly important.

If a few make life harder for the rest, then that’s unfortunate. But it’s nothing unusual. Many laws, in fact most, are made because a small minority of people play up. And yet they reduce freedom of us all.