It is truly obscene and absurd at the same time SM, that you should purport that the Coalition has offered anything but dissent in relation to the welfare of asylum seekers arriving by boat too our shores. Often desperate people, often victims of circumstance, often with children and families, and few in number.

And yet you ignore the bulk of wealthy types, arriving on planes and over staying their visa, buying property and establishing businesses and employing their country folk and those refugees arriving on boats for $7 an hour illegally. Bringing the third world too our country via the back door. The LNP have also done the least about this problem during their otherwise disruptive (to the very fabric of this country) tenures in Gov't.

As for the Malaysian solution, it was clearly the most effective policy available, (you would have thought) palatable too the LNP, and therefore achievable in a bi-partisan way. But "No", being the operative word SM, illustrates how interested the Coalition actually are in solving their pet problem, (a disgrace of their own creation since Howard and children overboard), "boat people".

No use bleating now SM, the Coalition are "equally culpable", as the Gov't is, for following the LNP down this path.

Attitudes towards asylum seekers is now a rampant, un-tethered political beast of the Coalitions own creation. Now residing in the Australian psyche, resulting (sadly for Australia) the best executed example of the successful pressing of the xenophobic button for political gain in Australia's political history.

"How low can you go ?. An historical snapshot of the LNP in Gov't and Opposition", may be the subject of my next post SM.

While a little further right, I think than you thinker 2 that was good stuff.
No use looking for a debate that has open honest out comes in mind from SM.
But your post is descriptive, and at some future date a review of these days will make it look brilliant.
Once we got a hung Parliament, once conservatives who had left their party's long ago siding with Labor.
Once media became infected with the story not the Truth.
We became unbalanced.
It is no longer politics no longer a wish to improve.
We began a school yard bully fight, truth no longer mattered.
In the Nature of Joe the flying peanut,mounting numbers of others,
People who say the most outrageous things,things few understand, including them selves, we are lost in a time of divide not resolve.

T2,

The Labor "compassionate" policy has engineered more misery and death in a few short months than the coalition did in years. To try and compare this to the 4 people in detention in 2007 is obscene and absurd.

Initially Labor could have claimed that they were trying to do the right thing, and the surge in boats was unexpected. Now they have no excuse for inaction.

Is it rationalisation, or merely spin?

What ever it is T2 is about the best at it that we have had on OLO in a long time.

Yes T2, I surrender, I give up, I now admit that white is black. How could I ever have not believed, with someone like you telling me otherwise?

Tell me, do you write all Julia's speeches, or does she have other spin doctors, just as good as you, with a slight of hand, [or word]?