misanthrope - Quote "These are very poor people who are frightened to go to their old countrys, so they want to stay in Australia so why not allow them to?"

HA HA, poor people do not have thousands of dollars to pay people smugglers - Why not, simple answer you have just opened a loophole others will exploit.

Look at the people in the refugee camps next to the country they are escaping from mostly these are poor people. Not the economic invaders we were getting.

Wow, 2,000 people in a city of 3.5 million, clearly we must open the borders because a bunch of Trotskyites, loopy Christians and doddering old ladies think it's a good idea.
Bear in mind also that when the Capitalist media report crowd figures for something the editors support they inflate the number threefold, if it's something they don't approve of they will halve it and if there are two opposing groups present they'll say that the numbers were equal on both sides whether that's the truth or not.

Foxy,
I was wrong, the farmers protest that I attended in Canberra, in July 1985, attracted some 45000 people from all parts of Australia.

It was addressed by PM Hawke, who gave us platitudes, and nothing was achieved. It was the biggest protest ever held in Canberra and had no impact on the government. The protest was about high interest rates (17%) and proposed tax changes. Farmers were going broke at the time.

If government doesn't take notice of such a gathering, why should they take any notice of a couple of thousand people organized by the left wing group of Getup. It shows few are concerned.

Linkt to Canberra protest 1985 from national achives,

http://vrroom.naa.gov.au/print/?ID=19013

Dear Banjo,

The problem was your 45,000 strong protest wan't Chinese. If you had been Chinese Bob Hawke would probably have bent over backwards to give you what you wanted.

Dear Banjo,

Thanks for explaining further about Mr Hawke and
the protests.

At least our current PM is going to try to do something
on a case by case basis - so these protests seem to jave
had some effect - or perhaps we have a more consultative
PM.