Labor's principles on this issue are exactly the same as the Coalition's: they'll do whatever it takes and stoop to any level to win government.

"We are all descendants from boat people, including our Indegenous Australians, so what makes us so different?"
Let's see, that most Australians aren't violent religious fanatics with zero moral fibre towards anyone outside their own sub-community (even when they don't like them, most Australians at least show basic courtesy to others); carries a dog-eat-dog self-entitlement mentality; knows only a life of tribal warfare, gansterism and theft, and isn't brought to emotional and behavioural extremes when we don't get our way, or when a foreigner depicts one of our religious dieties?

How about those?

I say we check everyone that comes through for these criteria- any that don't we should accept- any that do, we turn them back.

That way, my system we ensure we don't turn away the wrong people, and the people we do turn away are those we should never allow in.

I wrote:

< I don't think Howard did it for election reasons at all. He did it for principled / ideological / practical /sensible reasons. >

Poirot retorted:

<< Yes, I can see how you would find allowing people to bob about in the tropical sun on the deck of a container ship principled - although it brings me to question your principles. >>

There was a very strong and obvious principle. The one that says onshore asylum seeking is something that needed to be stopped decisively. And especially so as there were strong indications at the time of the Tampa that it was about to greatly increase, with major ramifications…. as opposed to the lack of principle of just letting them come in, and stay, unhindered, in unrestricted numbers and in an ongoing manner….. or dilly-dallying around like a headless chook after the whole caboodle had escalated, without any firm or effective policy approach…a la Gillard.

For all the bucketing that Howard has received over the years, he would no doubt have copped a bigger trammelling if he’d allowed onshore asylum to reach the scale that it was shaping up to reach at the time, before acting.

If that had happened, many thousands more people would have been involved, a harder line would have been taken with a tougher interpretation of the definition of a refugee, more people would probably have died at sea, there would have been a much larger scale of discontent in the Australia community, and so on.

Howard did the right thing.

@Ludwig: There was a very strong and obvious principle.

Yeah, and it seems it spoke to you and the majority of other voters real clearly. But you were claiming Howard didn't do this this to send a message to the voters, rather it was to send a message to the asylum seekers. I and a few others here are scratching our heads saying, "surely, you can't be serious - a couple of weeks out from an election and you say the Prime Minister was spending time trying to connect to the asylum seekers". It was an election stunt, pure and simple. You seem to acknowledge that in hindsight it had no effect on the boats. I put it to you that Howard ain't stupid - he never intended to it have an effect on the boats. All this lying and conniving was done to win an election.

To Howards eternal credit, at a deeper level he was a very honest politician. I admire that in him. When he won the election on the basis of stopping the boats, and after being elected he promptly went about putting in place policies that did just that despite the heated criticism it attracted. There were no half hearted measures. He did the same with with the GST - told the electorate what he was going to do before an election, and once elected on that basis went about doing it. At this level, I don't know of a more honest politician.

And there we have the conundrum of Howard - a lying bastard who was an honest politician.

<< And there we have the conundrum of Howard - a lying bastard who was an honest politician. >>

How strange, rstuart. You think that Howard was basically an honest pollie on every issue except the one at hand. Why do you pull this particular issue out as being so different? Why would you attribute a ‘lying bastard’ approach from Howard on this matter only? It makes no sense, especially given that there were very good reasons for his actions over the Tampa and the subsequent handling of the onshore asylum seeking issue.

The timing of the Tampa’s arrival a short period before an election was just completely coincidental. Howard would have probably done just the same thing, all else being equal, if it was two years to the next election?

The Tampa presented an opportunity, and a need, to act decisively. That’s it. The proximity to an election was in all probability entirely incidental.

And gee, if he had done it with some re-election motivation in mind, so what? The important thing was that a decisive political action was taken, at great risk, which proved to be the right action when considered along with the whole subsequent approach to the issue.

@Ludwig: You think that Howard was basically an honest pollie on every issue except the one at hand.

No, no. The picture Howard lied, dogged and deceived on all sorts of things. No doubt if you asked him, he would to this say he believed Haneef was a terrorist threat at the time. They all do that sort of thing, bless their black little hearts. But we seem to be willing to forgive them for that provided they are true to their word on the big picture items. As far as I can tell Howard always was, and to a remarkable extent.

If you want a prime example of the contrary, try Anna Bligh pledge "I will not sell off Queensland Rail" right before the election.