Dear Bazz,

I am talking about refugees not people who have visas
and then overstay. Pay attention.

Dear SM,

Sorry - I'll respond in more detail when you say something
intelligent.

Dear Banjo,

When you stop laughing perhaps you might re-read
my post and try to comprehend what it is that's
being suggested and equate the costs that we're
currently involved with compared with what I'm
suggesting that just might work. So far nothing
else has worked.

Apparently Gillard presented Abbott with a revised draft of the amendment this morning in the hope of gaining Liberal support. She said this one had "more words"....oh, goody!.....

Dear Poirot,

The guy doesn't comprehend inter office memos -
so anything with more "words," no chance of either
reading or comprehending.

Lexi,
The boats were stoppedfrom coming. The problem is that this stupid government, under Rudd, started them coming again. So something did work and that something is 'not give them what they want'= no more boats.

The financial equation is also simple. No incoming boats = no cost.

The additional bonus is 'no lives lost'. See easy! We all win.

Lexi,

The Labor government is spending about 4x to 10x as much on detention, processing, legal costs etc than the Howard government ever did.

While the pacific solution cost more per person, there was a tiny fraction of the number of boats and people to process.

In Nov 2007 there were 6 detainees none of which were children. Since 2008 an estimated 440 people have drowned trying to reach Australia.

Who was the more humane?

It's all about brain chemistry you know.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/04/08/3186006.htm?topic=

The gist of the above article is that Liberals - lefties - have more grey matter in a part of the brain associated with understanding complexity, while the conservative brain is bigger in the section related to processing fear. The study was published in Current Biology.

So we can't blame people for being 'primed' or 'vulnerable' to high levels of fear (and loathing?) about people and circumstances they don't understand.

I think one can see this tendency toward fear from the conservatives throughout the last decades of politics. For example, an inordinate fear of communism led to Vietnam, the fear of immaginary WMD's led to Iraq, the fear of the Asian peril led to Pauline Hanson.

But, this doesn't mean that we can't change our brain and our attitudes. We can and Norman Doidge explains the amazing things that we can make our brains do in his book "The Brain That Changes Itself".

And the fact that once upon a time Malcolm Frazer was scared of Asians swamping the country but since then he has changed his mind; perhaps because he was motivated to gain more knowledge and increase his understanding of the issues and the positive possiblities for our country.