Rehame reckons the tide is turning against the government amonst talk back jibberers but we’ve found the oppositive and after strong support for Crikey’s position, a few more critical or mildly questioning emails such as these have come in.

Crikey,

Thank God an issue has finally emerged that separates us great unwashed from the elitist bleeding hearts who react to everything with alogical emotion.

Complexities abound in the Tampa story. Piracy, international obligations, fair play under the rules and aiding and abetting people-smuggling are just a few.

Yet what do we get from such high minds as Hillary? Schoolyard style abuse, sentimental claptrap and contempt for majority opinion and the democratic process.

The world is already feeling better now that the exponents of political correctness have all been (in their jargon) marginalised out there on their philosophical docks waving teary hankies at the queue jumpers. Guess the lefty Libs among you can hardly wait to get their grubbies on some of the filthy lucre that will find its way to Oz from the drought-busted Afghani heroin trade.

For an old Collingwood supporter, jeez it feels good to finally be part of a crowd supporting the winners.

Bye, bye chardonnay lefty losers. The real workers are finally getting something their way.

CHARLIE

Do you really want an unlimited refugee policy?

Notice that we rarely hear numbers from the Howard-beaters. I have not heard anybody suggest we have an unlimited refugee policy, which suggests this is not a moral problem, but a numbers problem. Anybody who wants the current system changed is required to put up an alternative which includes the number of refugees they think we can take. And when that number is reached, should have the backbone to enforce it.

Think about a few things. There are now 438 people living in camps who are just as miserable and just as deserving, but they have the grace and faith to get in line. Their wait just got longer, and some of THEM will die while they wait. Why doesn’t anyone speak for their rights?

The Tampa group went through two or three safe countries on their way here. At least two of them are Muslim. They chose not to go to the UNHCR in those countries. They were not coming here for safety, but as a conscious choice to gamble safety against a better outcome.

Would you feel this way if this group were poor and white? What if they had forced a plane to land here? How about one guy at Melbourne Customs threatening to blow his brains out if you don’t let fifty of his friends in? The measure of respect for a law comes when it is INCONVENIENT to support that law. The whole point of having laws is so that you don’t have to make it up as you go along, and because it removes the ability of Government officials to make capricious, arbitrary and inconsistent decisions without consequence. Like to see your future? Try Indonesia.

Paul W

Take a jump pontificating wankers

Oh my bleeding heart! excuse me while I vomit up the cant and hypocrisy from crikey readers. Its the usual garbage, from an ashamed Australian, Howard/Pauline, blot on the nation. Why don’t you pontificating bunch of whining gutless whingers take a long run off a short deck.

Kind regards, Michael Casey

I’m intelligent and I disagree with Crikey

I was shocked to wake up today and find out that I was not one of the few “intelligent” crikey readers that were crying into their wheat-bix over the fate of the alleged refugees onboard the Tampa.

Maybe I’m from the wrong part of town, but I have always felt that to some degree we should be held accountable for the decisions we make. Whether that be threatening to jump off a boat, paying thousands of dollars to gain illegal access to an exotic country or by following the recognised protocol to be considered a refugee.

I might just be a cruel, evil bastard like Howard and Ruddock, or could it be that my lack of intelligence prevents my heart from bleeding profusely like so many others. I would like to think that we could all be a little more generous to these so-called refugees and credit them with some intelligence of their own. Maybe they exhibited some free will somewhere along the line, and maybe, just maybe, they should be held accountable for their situation. I would hate to think that because we think so much of ourselves, that we feel so compelled to help everybody who arrives on our doorstep, whilst ignoring those whom have no ability to reach this geographical position.

Maybe those people waiting to arrive on our shores legally in Kosovo, the Congo and Afghanistan should start saving their pennies, booking their plane tickets, overstaying their visas and threatening themselves with self harm. Then just wait for the intelligent Crikey readers to cry loud enough for the heartless and dull-witted Liberal politicians to cave in against their own beliefs.

Better yet, let the world judge us, as our own Australian bleeding hearts have judge the Singapore’s of the world before us, until we feel so ashamed that we compel our leaders to show that we are not the independent nation we aspire to be.

I only wish the starving people on our own city streets who live from night-to-night got this amount of Crikey goodwill, and press coverage. As their plight would be surely be improved for it, and is harmed by the lack of it.

Call me a heartless shit if you will, but if you are Rupert Murdoch, Elle McPherson, or a Pakistani “Refugee” looking for a better place to live, and you jump off a ship because things didn’t go your way – you can have a nice swim, watch out for the sharks and enjoy the surf – because you are not my problem.

Gareth W.

Economic or humanitarian refugees?

Dear Crikey,

I’m confused about the folks on the good ship Tampa – last time I looked they got into Malaysia (without requiring a visa) took a quick boat ride to Indonesia and then did a runner to Australia.

The question in my mind at which point did they switch from refugees fleeing on humanitarian grounds to refugees fleeing on economic grounds and at which point did they become straight out people who just think Australia looks like more fun and given all that at what point do we take responsibility for them.

Were they for example refugees fleeing persecution in Malaysia? Did they flee Malaysia for Indonesia ? Are they fleeing Indonesia persecution for Australia? Do all these countries not offer asylum from religious persecution or is the living just better in Australia.

Let me be really clear about this, it’s pretty pissweak the position that the Government have themselves in at the moment. This is a yes no decision, do they help these people or not. Are these people really refugees or should they be given the help that a bunch of people on a boat cruise which got into trouble near Christmas Island.

Frankly, it’s not that important to me either way, but it’s a complete bastard to all the people applying through the normal channels and a real pain in the arse for the people trying to build a system of honesty and openness in the world of religious and political persecution.

Andrew I

Ruddock sledge below the belt

Hi,

I am a relatively new subscriber and usually enjoy Crikey’s open and honest approach to journalism.

However I was somewhat dismayed at Hillary’s comments re Ruddock, quote “His pallid, mottled skin makes him look as if he’s dying. If there isn’t cancer gnawing at his body, it must have devoured his soul. God rot him.”

Do not take me wrong I whole heartedly support the general gist of the argument but I felt that such comments only serve to take you down to his level. Yes, he does have a cancer eating his soul and saying so is sufficient but wishing cancer upon Ruddock is as bad as his wishing death upon those on the Tampa. Surely Crikey is above this type of journalism. I will forgive you and put it down to emotion taking over from clear thought.

Keep up the good work, Peter M

Calm down Crikey

Hi Stephen

Don’t you think you and Hillary should go and have a Bex and a little lie down?

It really is annoying to auld phartz such as my very own goodself to have such displays of hysteria invading what I have come to see as an island of sweet reason in the journalistic wasteland.

Please don’t join the other reptiles in the wider media in their pathetic displays of the sort of wooly thinking and mindless name-calling that would be laughed out of any decent high school, let alone a supposedly mature forum such as I thought Crikey was meant to be.

By all means utter all the seemingly obligatory calls for decency and respect for human rights in the way we handle our would be immigrants. Of course, we need you to shout from the roof-tops that you are far more ‘compassionate’ and ‘decent’ than the rest of us Hansonite redneck yobboes out here. Otherwise how would we ever recognise you (and all the other saintly media types) for what you are. We all understand that journalists words, unlike everyone else’s, speak far more loudly than any possible actions.

By all means criticise the government for its ineptitude in dealing with the problems associated with the influx of ‘asylum seekers’. (By all means use all the available loaded terms to help you avoid the reality of the situation.)

But please, please, keep your self-indulgent nonsense to yourselves and your mates down at the pub. If you want to lecture us, your subscribers, about how horrid the Government is being to poor, defenceless people, come up with some valid, ie logical arguments about what precisely they ought to do.

Anon

Where was Crikey last year

Crikey, you know in the hysteria, and it is hysteria, that envelops the so called refugee crisis, some facts have been conveniently forgotten:

1. Norways population after being around for a lot longer than Australia is extraordinarily smaller. Want to find out what their allocation of spaces for refugees is? I have and it is a lot less than Australia. And yet our media breathlessly quotes them as calling Australia heartless?

2. Amazing these refugees have been so recently discovered. For years and years and years, refugees from a lot of countries outside the Arabic states have tried to escape their particular hellish existence. Where was the enraged Crikey last year? How much money and effort did your desperately offended and upset correspondents put out to help these people last year? It is easy to be currently enraged, but last decades whales are this decades refugees. WE need to help improve living standards for literally a couple of billion people and it needs to be done in their respective countries.

3. Menzies did indeed offer solace to refugees as did a lot of other countries because in those days repressive regimes did so much to keep them locked inside. The few that got out deserved some support. But times have changed in this one respect: in Menzies day, a smuggler could get half a dozen people at a time over the border, now smugglers have containers and huge shipping opportunities.

4. The last country to open the doors in the method you seem to advocate was the USA when the powerful Cuban lobby persuaded George Bush snr to let in unquestioningly any refugees from Cuba. The policy was reversed withing twelve months when the Americans discovered that Castro gleefully emptied the jails – almost completely – as well as the hospitals for the terminally ill and also the insane and paid for the damn boats to get them out of the country. Miami’s crime rate shot through the roof and that same Cuban lobby in the USA was begging for a reversal because of the decimation of so many of their local Florida neighborhoods.

5. Infrastructure doesn’t just appear overnight. Miami discovered this to its cost. If you could visit some German towns that didn’t plan for the influx of illegals after the Kosovo crisis you can see how you can breed bitter resentment in locals by thinking only with your undeniably good heart.

6. Does Australia need immigration? Damn right we do. What we bring in now is pitiful and we need the numbers to increase dramatically now, and not just white, rich, educated English speaking Europeans. But be warned: don’t confused structured immigration with matching infrastructure planning with open the doors with our hearts. If you for one minute think that there aren’t governments across the world who could easily reduce some local tensions by dumping onto a sucker country like Australia a million people maybe, then you’re naive. Shipping is easy: get some containers which cost bugger all, get a ship flagged to the Belsize, load it up with desperately starving people and send it on its way. When we decide oops, we goofed, we better restrict this, we’ll be accused of hypocrisy.

Hasn’t it occurred to you for one minute how strange it is that Australia is being targetted by the smugglers? Why not, let’s say, Singapore? Malaysia? Well, yes, we have a huge fence to protect that makes it easy and as more than refugee on the Tampa has already said, Australia is preferable to Indonesia (no shit, Sherlock) but it is because those same people pointing the finger at us have no interest in helping, but would love it if our fences came down. Wanna know how many people from Singapore would be on the first plane to Oz if our reputation became known as the easy place to get into? Want a guess how many Malays would be swimming with the tide to get in as refugees?

I think it is great you have a heart and please be passionate, but don’t be self indulgent. You and your correspondents were quiet last year and my guess is that next year there will be another barrow to push. Personally, I’d love it if you could focus more on the mentally handicapped and their families in Australia who have precious little government support because they aren’t trendy and do not lobby effectively. They need our help as much as anyone. And let’s by all means get immigration opened up. But don’t become self indulgent and advocate long term decisions with your heart alone.

JOHN

Australians are just sheep who follow the leader

Hillary really didn’t need to add the cancer bit. Ruddock’s unfortunate looks have as little to do with the real world as Wooldridge’s slanted eyes. (Is that racist, or just vilification of the facially challenged?) In any case, Hillary’s rantings, well-intentioned as they were, will fall on deaf ears – or eyes, in this case. Most Australians – and I do mean the majority – are sheep. They may not like Ruddock’s looks, but he IS the immigration minister, isn’t he? He knows what he’s talking about, doesn’t he? Same goes for Howard.

Aussies, by and large, far from being the defiant, anti-authority mob they picture themselves as, are really only too willing to be told what to do and what to think. Thinking for themselves is dangerous and hurts the brain. Oh, they’ll sympathise with a sick kid in a detention centre, if that sick kid’s case is publicised on TV and in the papers. But they won’t march on Parliament demanding the release of the whole family. Rather, they’ll go with Phil’s plan to get the kid fostered out “into the community”.

Well, that’s nice, says the Aussie-in-the-street. Put him into a nice Australian home and train him to sit on a nice Anglo toilet, instead of squatting over a hole in the ground like we hear the ignorant buggers do. Teach him Christian values. Dad and Mum can go back to wherever they came from, assured that their little boy is safe and happy. They should be grateful – especially as Phil hints that the bloke’s not the kid’s real father anyway. Aussies? They’re no different to the masses in any country. They’ll follow any leaders, even the current crop, as willingly as Germans followed Hitler. God help us if we find an Adolf before a Disraeli turns up

Jim

Shut out the Islamic infiltrators

Hillary,

What gives you the right to decide what this nation (which is composed of Australian people) stands for and believes in, when 95% of some 30,000 respondents to a Channel 9 survey indicated that they are in accord with the decision made by the Prime Minister & the Minister for Immigration.

Your comments about Phillip Ruddock appear to me more like the taunts one would expect from a 3rd grade school child rather than a logical thinking adult. One wonders if you learned your rhetoric from the Paul Keating school?

I agree with you that Australia needs people, but surely to classify the Riff Raff that we currently see, rioting in the detention centres, as “entrepreneurial” is just idiotic!

The other question that bothers me, is where are the leaders and followers of Islam who have already infiltrated into Australia, when it comes to offering assistance to these “asylum seekers”. One does not see, hear or read of any of them doing anything for their fellow men. Perhaps this is not an Islamic ethic?

I am gratified to read that Crikey has lost 2 subscribers as a result of your ill considered rantings. I do not feel as strongly as that, and besides, I appreciate the site too much to be put off by your one fall from grace. Perhaps you had not given enough consideration to your article before going to print?

Di Rossi