Australia did pay Lexis massive bill for every refugee under John Howard it may well be true that only pride stops us using the Howard solution.
But we are paying EVERY CENT to send these boat people to Malaya, and to keep them there.
Not because we are a horrible country.
Maybe in part because we let the whole issue be used to flog politicians by politicians.
Confront this, it is us voters, who demand an end to boats.
Enought to change this government, any government.
Both sides willing to do almost anything spend almost any amount to do our bidding.
If Gillard said today, ok we are sorry we intend to go back to the Howard solution.
Would Shadow minister say well done,would the left be content with any thing other than an open door.
We get out comes that are at best compromises.

SM,

If I had all the answers for you - I'd probbly be in politics - instead I can simply follow my conscience and point things out to you to widen your take on things and correct where you're misguided or misinformed. All we can hope is that surely someone somewhere shall be able to come up with a better solution to the problem that has
perplexed all sides of politics for sometime - and probably will for sometime to come. As I stated previously, we currently have a race to the bottom where ludicrous arguments are used to justify actions that the pollies think will gain them re-election.

I have nothing more to say on this subject. I'm going to go and take a nice hot bath and pretend the world is full of decent people.

Lexi,

The world abounds with "decent" people, although sadly they don't appear to be inhabiting the front bench of the Federal Government.

" A number of West Australian Labor MPs have signed a letter opposing plans to send unaccompanied children to Malaysia under an asylum seeker deal."
In draft documents, Malaysia has removed all references to human rights.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/06/03/3235319.htm

Lexi,

You are right to some extent. There is no perfect solution. Whilst detaining people on Nauru is distasteful, it pales compared to the floods of people that would come with an open door policy.

Belly,

If Labor adopted the pacific solution I would be deprived of one of my better weapons to beat the idiots in government, and would be left with only I told you so.

http://resources.news.com.au/files/2011/06/03/1226069/014125-110604-labor.pdf

Some food for thought:

"Labor urged to revive Pacific Solution by refugee activists

LABOR'S support base on border security is crumbling, with a key critic of the Howard government's Pacific Solution calling for its partial revival in preference to Labor's "nightmare" plan to send unaccompanied children to Malaysia."

Marion Le, a refugee lawyer, last night urged Labor to reopen the Nauru processing centre - the same facility she demanded be shut in 2005 because of concern about the treatment of asylum-seekers.

She was backed by human rights lawyer Julian Burnside, who accused Labor of failure on refugees and said asylum-seekers would receive better treatment in Nauru than Malaysia.

Meanwhile, in Western Australia, 14 state Labor MPs signed a petition condemning the plan to send unaccompanied minors to Malaysia as part of the refugee swap.

Opposition to Julia Gillard's Malaysian solution hardened yesterday after news that a draft agreement over her plan to exchange 800 boatpeople for 4000 confirmed refugees processed in Malaysia excluded any reference to human rights.

Just have to comment further on the plan to send unaccompanied children to Malaysia, and under a deal that has had human rights scrubbed clean off the agenda.

The stars continue to fall from this longtime Labor voter's eyes - can you imagine the sort of protest this type of decision would have provoked when the Labor party was in opposition? They would have been spitting chips if the Howard Government had suggested such a thing.

While Tony Abbott fails to inspire in any shape or form, Gillard is leading a government which is becoming more despicable by the day. It's unbelievable that a party who engaged in much wailing and gnashing of teeth over Howard's questionable policy on asylum seekers is now contemplating dumping asylum seeking tots into refugee camps with no protections in place.

Unbelievable!