About Howards way, terrorizing australians in line with bushorrism. No wonder australians whilst having everything,in the safest continent in the world, never been attacked, nothing in the world to fear, have been terrorized with lies, racist propaganda and coverups of the truth for seventy years.
We are just waiting for it.. the big um what.. don't know but it's definately coming.. paranoia and howard and his ilk just love it, maybe even believe it.
I would like to see the polls on refugees 'without' the six years of anti refugee propaganda by lil jackboot Johnny.
Our tradition is to lend a hand to anyone! in trouble, is it Howard that has helped destroy ' what it is to be australian?'
No wonder they hide that test from the public, I'm betting ' Barry Jones' would pass it for the rest of us....Oh and..Fidel Castro, he has a photographic memory also.
Rudd is what I fear most, " conservative bureaucrat in a position of immense power" popular elections? get rid of em.
We need some honest people with "no ego" making plans for the future.

Cheers

Didn't Labor introduce the detention system? So they can't really scream too loudly about that terrible dictator Howard (oh, sorry, re-elected how many times?) using it.

Whining about the media using sensationalism in Australia is like complaining about night being dark - it's a fact.

Howard's gone Andrew - get over it already, it sounds like you'll make a career if allowed complaining about it - have you noticed we have a new problem .. the buck stops somewhere but it's not the current leader's fault.

Andrew,
I would have far more respect for what you say if you showed more sympathy for the real refugees. i.e. the poor buggers in various makeshift camps. Instead you and others support those 'illegals' that have funds to travel to Malaysia, thence smuggled into Indonesia and pay smugglers exorbitant fees to get them to Australia. These people are illegal, because one requires a visa to enter Australia and they don't have one.

We have a large tourist industry here and admit thousands of travelers a year, so why do the illegals not seek a visa? Because they, for various reasons, would not qualify and they want to be accepted as refugees so as to obtain our social security benefits. They know they will be found and destroy any documents they have to make it harder for authorities to check the story they spin. The longer they are held the more public sympathy they get and we eventually bend the rules to admit them.

If we are willing to take refugees, we should be particually tough on the illegals and admit more real refugees. If illegals are found to be telling lies, that should immediatly void an application and deported.

You can't be serious in advocating that we freely let the illegals into the community. Look and learn from England, who did this and thousands went underground. These people are subject to exploitation from employers and other unscrupulous persons.

Come on Andrew, detention has far more going for it.

Andrew

I think all Australians are happy that genuine refugees are allowed to come to Australia

You are defending people who have the resources to hire a boat to take them into Australia. If these people have the ability to hire a boat from Malaysia/Indonesia, they have the ability to use the official channel to apply for immigration into Australia, all these people are doing is jumping the queue and using an illegal means to bypass other people to get into Australia.

These people are by passing genuine refugees as well

We should do all we can do to discourage these people from coming to Australia

I suggest perhaps only a minority of the public thinks that arriving in Australia without prior approval constitutes 'doing nothing wrong'. Particularly when that person may have passed through several other politically stable countries before applying for refuge in Australia. I suggest if their circumstances are as dire as they claim then a period of incarceration is a small price to pay. At least until their bona fides are assessed.

Further to that I'll make a long range prediction that Rudd's unannounced high immigration policy will backfire. Some have suggested that the combination of skilled migration, refugees, 'guest workers' and relatives could exceed 300,000 people a year. Australia's population might rise to 30 million well before mid century. I suggest new arrivals bring their own water supply and suburban land. Things might also get a bit difficult when the mining boom fizzles and the native born drift back to the cities.

dovif2 and banjo make sense whilst the hysterical handwringing anti-Australia snivellers love to keep up the lament about how inhumane John howard and others who worked so hard to keep Australia safe are.They DO NOT want to acknowledge where the real refugees are to be found.All you weeping buggers need to re-read banjo and dovif2 articles AGAIN please.

socratease