You speak with much wisedom I think david F all the peoples from Africa who will drown at sea if the Europesn people don't help them all, is very cruel I think. And what it is you say is very right we must have a brave heart and help all the poor people who come to Europe by boat. Please a big question for you david f. please? Why don't Australie help all the people do you think? Is it they are racest and don't like the black people or mean here in Australie? We have a very big nation here with lots of land all around and can fit millions and millions of more people here. Plenty of water and cows and grains and know how to make many things so why not bring the African people here who know how to live in the desterts and the bush properly?

Dear misanthrope,

I appreciate your compliments. Although we are a big country our resources are limited. Although we have an area approximately the size of the US we only have 3% of the fresh water that the US has. Our soil is leached out and much of it is unsuitable for agriculture. Spreading cities and mining are taking up arable land. In 2013 Australia had 23.13 million people. It is estimated that at about 30 million people we will no longer be able to export food. Above that we will need to import food to feed our population. What do we get it from? Most other countries have their own expanding population. We can't easily absorb millions more.

Like the Australian people most African people do not live in the deserts. African deserts are very large but also thinly populated. We can only take in a small number of asylum seekers. However, we do not have to place asylum seekers in detention centres like concentration camps, and there is no reason we cannot get together with other nations and try to make things better in countries where people are suffering from poverty, oppression and war.

As I wrote in my previous post “Limiting the flow of arms, population control, education – especially for women and equitable sharing of the earth’s resources are some of what can be done. Instead of seeing how tough and mean we can be let’s do what we can to make matters better.”

Still waiting for a left whinger to comment on Juliar's $140 000 jet ride to a labor fundraiser.

There have been abuses of entitlements by people in all the major parties. However, since the speaker is supposed to act as a neutral person whose duties include keeping the house in order perhaps the speaker should be a person who has not been politically active in any party. I see no reason that the speaker should be a member of parliament and associated with a political party. That is a built-in conflict of interest. Bronnie is acting as a Lib partisan. A Labor member can be expected to act as a Labor partisan. The speaker should be neutral and not associated with a party.

David,

Don't you remember questions being asked about Harry Jenkins throwing elaborate receptions for Labor party donors at taxpayers' expense?

Are the left whingers suffering from collective amnesia?

Personally I would prefer a zero tolerance approach for every politician who gets caught out. No excuses what-so-ever and no second chances. And that includes any of them who received donations that go unreported until they are discovered.

If the pollies knew the jig would be up if they get caught, they wouldn't try, unless they were completely greedy and/or stupid (which many of them probably are).

These people are on $200,000+ salaries and then try to diddle the tax payers for a $20 taxi ride. Get out, we don't want you! Stretching that to tax payer funded holidays, chartering private jets and helicopter rides, these crooks deserve no mercy because they know damn well what they are doing is wrong.

Weed out the crooks, no matter who they are.