I see a problem here.

Some people stll refuse to comply with the tried-and-true method of blaming the victim.

Viva Sancho!

Wot Kevin sez. "world's most evil trade.......rot in gaol.....absolute scum of the earth.....lowest form of life.....vilest form of human life.......rot in hell"

What an hysterical over reaction. A bizarre statement in the context of a handful of boats in 4 months.

This man is an embarrassment when he goes on like this. Can somebody ensure he gets his kiddie-speed everyday?

A brief list of more evil trades; certain drugs, blackmarket uranium, child slavery etc.

Yabby, else would you expect from the airy fairy philosophy of a socialist (spits appropriately)?

We have seen the populous profligacy… the double back flip on fiscal policy, Kevin is a solicalst on the run and by the way he seems to be delivering most policy from internet censorship to erosion of our national security……

he is a prime minister with the runs.

Now lets see if this message again gets a diverted to a higher authority before it goes into the forum?

Ah good Prince! Long time no see, Col. Bronwyn, too, will be both pleased and relieved that your presence again graces these threads. See: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2687#60149

For a while there I had thought you had been decapitalized, that most fearsome punishment that is sometimes dished out to the ascerbic, with the arrival within the OLO firmament of one "rouge" (see: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2697#60384 ), but upon reflection the literary style didn't seem to match.

Just between you and me, Bronwyn may have trodden on a banana skin earlier in this very thread. She starts out commendably well in stating:

"It might play well electorally to describe people smugglers as the scum of the earth, but as with most of these populist phrases it's an overly simplistic reading of events.".

Unfortunately, Bronwyn immediately goes on to overly simplify with respect to Indonesian fishermen in saying:

"Many of those involved [in people smuggling] are doing no more than providing a service and attempting to make a living. A lot of them are Indonesian fishermen who've had their livelihoods taken from them as Australia has ramped up the patrolling of 'its' waters and cracked down on 'illegal' fishing.".

The oversimplification is that in recent times, in response to the stimulus of the demands of the Japanese market for seafoods, overfishing by these very fishermen has been threatening the survival of fish stocks and biodiversity generally in the waters that international convention recognises as Australian. Australia is simply attempting to manage the resource to ensure its survival. It isn't the traditional fishing that has gone on for centuries that provoked the tightening of control over access, but the escalated rapacity of the plundering of this resource by proxy, as it were, for the greater east Asia seafood market.

Australia's recent actions with respect to both illegal fishing and secondary movement asylum seeking are really both outworkings of a very responsible population policy, focussing upon forcing the costs of over-population to be borne at source.

It's "solicalsm" by stealth! Welcome back, Col.

Did you really mean to say "populous profligacy"? If so, it was rather clever.

Forrest

"Australia's recent actions with respect to both illegal fishing and secondary movement asylum seeking are really both outworkings of a very responsible population policy, focussing upon forcing the costs of over-population to be borne at source."

Forrest, for someone who is usually so discerning and so attuned to picking up all sorts of subtleties, your words here are as cold and hard edged as the swords you love to write about.

I honestly can't fathom you out at times. You (and dear Ludwig too) need to stop thinking of asylum seekers as mere statistics and start thinking of them as living, breathing, hurting human beings with the same needs and aspirations as you and me. Have you never read some of the truly horrific and gut wrenching individual stories? Where are your usually well-developed powers of empathy?

I know over-fishing is a problem. I don't need a lecture on that score. :) My point was that, rightly or wrongly, it is Australian government policy that is directly driving many Indonesian fishermen to use the same boats that once earned them their living fishing to now ferry asylum seekers. And as such, it is incredibly ignorant to label all people smugglers as 'scum of the earth' as Kevin Rudd has done. His tirade should have been directed towards the manipulative and ruthless people smuggling brokers and syndicates, not the small fry in their small boats. He needed to differentiate between the two very different groups.

Apart from that, his measured words and those from Chris Evans and Bob Debus, and as well the swift and compassionate rescue and medical response to this tragedy, are all very welcome. They're showing true leadership here and their actions stand in stark contrast to the responses we've seen to tragic accidents involving asylum seekers in the past.

I know Yabby is dog whistling on this, but he is perfectly correct to point out the hypocrisy and contradiction in Rudd's stance.

Ginx

A BIG WELCOME BACK!! Please hang around and don't keep disappearing on us! :)