http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/SA-Liberal-senator-resigns-on-fresh-shoplifting-cl-pd20120621-VGNFL?opendocument&src=rss
If Tony Abbott and his school yard BULLY team,stand before us and highlight this.
If they put one tenth of the angst they have about Labors problems, if they explain why they have excepted this Lady's vote.
I will eat my hat.
It will not happen, we must soon confront the truth, Abbott has two standards,and has not transformed but is still unfit to be in the Parliament.

Belly,

I think the point is that Mary Jo Fisher has now been required to resign from parliament.

Will Thomson follow this example?

Scribbler 100 000 p.a. this is madness. While some refugees have needed skills most don't with 60% unemployed still living off the state several years later.

The 13000 quota is already nearly the highest per capita (of Aus) intake in the world.

The boats typically take those that would be at the end of the queue, and taking 100 000 would still not deter them.

SM,
You are missing the point. I am not talking about bringing in a hundred thousand refugees and 'dumping' them into our towns and cities as we currently do. I am talking about a properly planned and executed integration program that opens the gates and makes use of the labour and skills that come with it.

It is a fact that in times of economic hardship, governments are best placed to spend and invest on infrastructure, ie building for the future and more prosperous times. Australia is sadly lacking in much needed infrastructure. Quite simply, our transport is woeful, our cities are overcrowded with little thought gone into expansion or planning. We need big projects to get or even keep the economy rolling and we cannot afford to do it under current or even past strategies.

I am also not saying this would be easy. Indeed it would be very difficult to accomplish well, but our biggest hurdle would not be the physical scale of the project. It would be overcoming the xenophobic attiitudes within Australia now, attitudes that are exploited by all sides of government.

If we, as a nation, embraced this concept; if business and government came together and worked as one rather than two opposing entities; and if Australians were made to realise the potential gains, it could be the single biggest undertaking by any country this century.

To answer your remark about 60% of refugees being unemployed at the moment, This is the fault of poorly managed integration systems and the problem that, when finally released, they gravitate to like-minded cultural hubs within our society which creates its own set of problems.

If you balk at the numbers I have suggested, then lower it. Even 50,000 pa would go a long way to achieving this project.

SM, there is no easy solution - to either the refugees' plight or our own internal problems. We need to start thinking outside the square and we need to adopt a strong single policy that encompasses all sides of government.

SM,
Added to say, thanks for replying to my proposal. ;

@scribbler,


“I am talking about a properly planned and executed integration program…”
"60% of refugees being unemployed… This is the fault of poorly managed integration systems…”

Yes, indeed, and this is how it will work:

There is a line of 100 work applicants, the employer will be *encouraged* to select the “refugees” first.
There is line of students seeking entry to university, the institution will be *encouraged* to take the “refugees” first.
There is a list of homeless seeking public housing, the minister will be *encouraged* to house the "refugees" first.


And if some of the "xenophobes" start to whine about it.
No matter, we'll expand the our racial vilification laws.

How could any right-minded person take exception to such a progressive approach!