"The obvious object of the original posting was 'Greens-bashing'."

Actually not so. My politics is issue based, not party based.
So I feel free to criticise any policies and also mention those
that I think are correct.

On this particular issue however, I see a contradition in terms,
when it comes to the Greens. So the question arises, are their
politics based on heart on your sleeve stuff, or well thought
through? Ludwig answered that for me. As I stated from the
start, this is a philosophical question which should go well
beyond party politics, for its a question about the future
of humanity.

Wiz, I have to disagree about using NZ as a comparison. NZ
is not a hop,skip and jump from Indonesia. Their fishing
boats sail into Australian waters every day, not so for
NZ, its too far. Whether Indonesian fishermen come and fish
here, or try a more lucrative business such as people transport,
would just depend on how keen they are to earn hard cash.

If I had my way, all asylum seekers would come from refugee
camps, so that all have a chance, not just those who can rake
together enough money, to pay off the appropriate dealers in
the trade. Women and children should be considered too, not
just mainly young males. But the fact remains, there are
roughly 10-20 million refugees in camps and we cannot take them
all. As global population rises, this problem is only going
to increase, not decrease.

So where is the balance? remains a key question for us now and
into the future, as global population pressure rises.

Yabby defends himself from the charge of 'Green Bashing' :).. gee Yabbs.. you should know by now that if you criticize any group.. you are 'bashing' them ..... in fact to just disagree about something.. according to our PC brigade.. mostly it seems of the 'green/democrat/Leftoid'(or is it Leftard) political flavor.. you are "spreading hate, bashing,part of the problem, full of venom," blah blah etc.

Well..I'd rather be charged with that than with 'Lunacy' as I see our Green dragon Bob Brown needs to be labelled... well according to Andrew Bolt at least.

WHAT DOES BROWN/Greens WANT ? re water conservation.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22793250-25717,00.html

>>To see how insane Brown's plan truly is, just do the maths.

A new dam in the Mitchell River national park - which used to be a dam reservation until this Government decided to lock it up - would cost about $1 billion, according to Melbourne Water.

That could give us a dam about the size of the Thomson, Melbourne's biggest.

Now compare.

To hold the same amount of water in rainwater tanks, the city would need another 500,000,000 standard 2000-litre tanks, or about 150 for every Melburnian.

And the cost? About $1000 billion, at standard retail prices. Enough to build 1000 Thomson dams<<

So,...Brown is 'loony' on Water... ok..how about the other end of the scale.. 'consumers of water'.....

"Aah Those poor refugees.. lets take many more in... more more more...specially those effected by environmental trouble" (paraphrase/summary of my understanding of his position)

So there you have it. Ingredients for a political party to be declared "nul, void, loony, stupid, increasing the problem while decreasing/attacking the solution".

And CJ Morgan teaches our uni students ? :) Onya CJ...I guess you also tell them how educated you are and how SuperBob is the true Messiah of 'Truth,Justice and the Environmental Way' ? (rather than Andrew Bolt) 0_-

Unfortunately this thread seems to have been derailed by our most prolific frootloop. I hope that last dump made Boazy feel better, and that he wiped his arse and washed his hands afterwards.

There is no point in dignifying crap like that by responding.

Yabby, I had anticipated your point about Australia being somewhat easier to reach than NZ, but that doesn't mean we can't look to NZ for ideas on how to more humanely treat refugees.

BTW, Boaz, when Keating introduced Mandatory Detention centres there was a 273 day limit, and no unaccompanied children were detained. Howard's measures (including the Pacific Solution) were considerable harsher. I don't object to mandatory detention per se, but without rapid and humane processing, any usefulness they may have as a deterrent is far outweighed by the human costs of extended detention.

CJ, why worry about Boazy. He can only derail the thread if others let him. The discussion is very much on track.

So can you address my pertinent questions?

Or perhaps rather than give your personal stance, can you tell us the Greens’ position on how they would accommodate asylum seekers if not in mandatory detention and how they would balance their non-detention policy and the increase in numbers that it could lead to with their policy on limits to population growth and overall sustainability.

Yeah, fair enough Ludwig. I agree that the best way to deal with annoying nutters like Boazy is to ignore them.

On topic, I should stress that although I'm a Greens member because overall their policies accord most with my own views, I'm not a spokesman for them at any level. On this subject I can only do what anybody else who's genuine about trying to balance humanitarian concerns with environmental issues can do - i.e. look up the various relevant policies and assess them in the context of my personal values and knowledge.

With respect to mandatory detention of asylum seekers, I start from the position that it is wrong to incarcerate a group of people because of the possibility that a few of them may not be genuine - even more so if this involves incarcerating them for extended periods in remote offshore locations where they have no access to advocacy and support services.

However, like wizofaus, I'm willing to compromise on that stance if it can be shown that processing can be done expedititously, and that detention does not mean isolation from the kinds of advocacy and support services that would ameliorate the trauma of unjust incarceration and assist in integrating refugees into the community. Otherwise, I really think that fears of what might happen if asylum seekers were released into the community are exaggerated, compared with the actuality of what is unjust and inhumane treatment of the vast majority of them.

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