Foxy, perhaps your wily Reynard should be listened to, methinks.

We all 'pray' for decency here, even if we disagree on what that might be, and I even heard Malcolm Fraser quizzed on his views of Gillards 'I can't believe it's not a Pacific Solution' solution,oops, sorry, sustainable solution, but I am pretty sure she is all piss and wind, as the commonfolk from Altona/South Australia might say.

Tell me, is your glass a pot or a schooner, a pint, or a litre?

I look into my mini-sized political sherry glass, and it's hard to tell the level, so little does it hold.

<< Hardly anything to boast about is it? >>

No, Gillard’s achievements to date are not anything to boast about, Blue Cross. She has just started and she's only done what she needed to do.

<< Your first point shows there is no difference between the ALP and Coalition. >>

That’s about right. There is not much difference between the Libs’ no mining tax position and Gillard’s greatly watered down policy.

The Libs and Labs have a got a very similar position on border protection which, being a very rare thing in Australian politics these days, means that they are both on the right track.

<< As for 'tightening border security'... hardly, some dogwhistling on boats, and not a peek on the fly-ins and overstayers at all. >>

Not dog-whistling, sensible policy. But yes I agree that action now needs to be taken with similar conviction on other aspects of the infringement of our immigration policies; a la visa overstayers, etc.

<< the inclusion of an undefined phrase that means nothing into the title of a mass-populater supporter as now being a 'sustainable' mass populater. >>

We’ll just have to wait and see if the word ‘sustainable’, as in the change from the minister for population to the minister for sustainable population, actually means anything or whether record-high immigration and the pandering to rapid continuous growth will continue under Gillard.

But even the fact that she acknowledges issues of sustainability and problems with population growth has set her miles ahead of any other PM in Australia’s entire history! (and light-years ahead of Rudd).

Give Gillard a go, Blue Cross. Don’t be so down on her so early in the piece.

Here's an interesting little visual about "boat people" I got on Twitter.

http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/8301/anxiety.jpg

I see Nauru being mentioned by Poirot, and insists that Nauru's woes are the fault of Australia. Not so at all, according to the 4 corners show about Nauru a few years back. The country's finance minister, was a rock and roll roadie recruited by the Prime minister of Nauru, while having a few bets in a Melbourne TAB agency. That the country went from being one of the more wealthy ones (thanks to exporting phosphate to Australia), to a very poor country (might have something to do with their finance minister and hopelessly corrupt Government) speaks volumes. Any mining activity you choose to name has an end-point where the resource is either completely exhausted or costs more to dig it up than it is worth, any successful mining company will put effort into the next project before the last one is unprofitable. Being independent means when a country blows it like Nauru did, you're on your own.

<< Has anyone commenting here done any research into the benefits for the people of Nauru from the "intellectual and technical expertise" experienced by them while being promoted to Australia's defacto gaoler of refugees. >>

Not me Poirot.

But Nauru has been willing to again host asylum seekers. So they must have benefitted very nicely out of the previous deal: http://www.smh.com.au/national/rundown-nauru-likes-coalition-plan-20100531-wrgl.html

Of less relevance, but considerable interest: http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2004/s1206183.htm

It seems that PM Gillard neglected to actually talk to the East Timor government prior to announcing what seems to be an increasingly vague "solution" to a problem that doesn't really exist. I predict that it'll never happen.

As for...

<< Advantages for E Timor seem to me that it would bring quite a lot of intellectual and technical expertise to the country >>

...what Poirot said. Nauru doesn't seem to have benefited enormously from all the "intellectual and technical expertise" that Howard's so-called "Pacific solution" brought to that country.