Marilyn, did you say that there are children locked up on Christmas Island, or are they ‘under house arrest’ in the ‘community’ (detention homes?)? They should be in a neighbourhood somewhere, going to school or playing with other kdis etc - after health checks of cours - which takes a few days???

It’s not Howard’s fault that Kim “me too” Beazley then tried to be more Howard than Howard and so cheated Australians of the chance to vote on moral issues.

Rudd is another matter. He attempted to depict himself as a sort of dove with defensive claws, and to lend an appearance of compassion to some very questionable methods. In a way that’s more dangerous than anything Howard did.

Rudd attempted to outsource not only the handling of boat people, but all the moral choices too, to another country outside the Refugee Convention. Whether Indonesia is less humane than us or more humane, is beside the point. It’s an act of Pontius Pilate cowardice.

It potentially opens the door for more acts like the alleged sabotage of SIEV X by Australian and Indonesian government agents, hidden from the public view, and like the outsourcing of the Bali Nine arrests to a country known to use a different burden of proof in criminal trials as well as capital punishment, just because Australia cannot.

It opens the door for more Australian dirty work to be handed to another Suharto in the future, if such a person should gain control of Indonesia once more, or to any other convenient neighboring country. There is no qualitative difference between this and the United States practice of “rendering” interrogation subjects to third-party countries for torture, before they had their own torture program.

Rudd’s attempted solution tended to make all this respectable, whether or not he really thought it through. Presumably he did not think it through, which makes him rash and dangerous.

The outcome of this farce solves no problems except those of one group of 78 people. And introduces three problems we didn’t have before:

1) There’s now a perception that Australia is amenable to blackmail
2) We have lost enormous face in the eyes of the Indonesians, to the extent of cancelling a state visit
3) Other asylum seekers in detention, who are not being fast-tracked, are now feeling justifiably aggrieved

Anyone who watched ‘The Long Way Home’ on ABC TV last night will know what I mean when I refer to the ‘original sin’ component. Perhaps those who advocate cruel and inhumane treatment are just victims of ‘original sin’? (I nearly threw something at the TV - that bloke???) David Hill’s response was a mirror of mine! People at the Murdoch papers have the same effect on me? I’m with you Phil - excellent use of the language?

I still think Rudd is showing his Machiavellian mastery of politics (in the purest sense of the term) rather than bungling the issue.

There was a path between the horns of the dilemma, if only he could see it. He could have declared himself a man of principle, then stuck to his principles, and dished out his banal “absolutely no apology for that.”

That’s why he was elected after all, and so popular for so long. People thought he was a man of principle.

A WOFTAM carbon plan and a boatload of homeless people have shown that to be a bit of a crock.

Indonesian cabinet documents show that Australian officials had specifically asked their counterparts on October 9 to seize the craft “to send a clear message to people-smugglers”.

They had been aware of the wooden cargo vessel for a week, since it left Malaysian waters near Johor Baru with 255 Sri Lankan asylum-seekers on board.

A day after that formal request, the Prime Minister brought the matter up in a phone call with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. The detail of that conversation was then leaked in Australia, by way of showing what great work the two leaders were doing on the issue.

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Just over a week later, Rudd was in Jakarta for Yudhoyono’s inauguration, this time with another personal favour to ask: would Indonesia deal with a second boatload of 78 Sri Lankans that had been taken on board the Oceanic Viking in international waters south of Sumatra. Which is where the deal began to unravel.

Yudhoyono said yes, but his advisers insisted on a face-saving approach. They seized on the “humanitarian issue” of an ill child on board needing urgent medical attention.

That excuse proved to be a furphy but it worked in deflecting domestic criticism that Jakarta was kow-towing to Canberra.

In fact, Australia was, by this point, locked into doing things Indonesia’s way - so its first request, to drop the 78 off at the nearest port on the south coast of Java, was knocked back, and the Oceanic Viking eventually was directed to Tanjung Pinang, deep in Indonesian territory.

And for three weeks it has sat, heaving on the swell of the South China Sea, with its Tamil cargo gambling they could roll the dice and win - the stakes being Australian citizenship - so long as they stared Rudd down.

Rudd tried to deflect his own domestic political concerns by making assurances such as the one that the 10 women and children on board would be put up in community housing, rather than in the Australian-funded detention centre in Tanjung Pinang.

Nonsense, said Indonesian officials, who said if it was good enough for Australia to build the facility, it should be good enough for Australia to accept its use.

The circuit-breaker was an offer written in Tamil on Immigration Department letterhead, promising an expedited processing of refugee claims.

Twenty-two Sri Lankans on board the Oceanic Viking took the deal last Friday; they can expect to be in Australia within a month.

The remaining 56 are due to disembark today - leaving only those on the Jaya Lestari at its dock in western Java holding out, hoping against all possibility they might get something even remotely similar.

They won’t. After the Oceanic Viking debacle, Indonesia hasn’t the slightest interest in any further special deals. And Rudd must know he can’t afford any.

we should also appoint the IMF as the leader of Australia and most definitely, scrap the RBA.

Only joking.

Indeed!

CLIFFG - Yes, but the point is, that Rudd with his high popularity, an Opposition in disarray had the opportunity to take the wind out of the sails of first the media(the likes of who Phil so eloquently indicated)then the opposition(who’ve been treated likewise). He had the floor. He could’ve taken the initiative via an address to the nation; told the people the facts(truths), bowled over the myths and bull shit, and then proceeded to act like a leader, with decency and humanity. He chose not to!

VENISE - I agree with you about the ‘god botherer’ aspect. It’s nauseating isn’t it? God and country and ‘serving’ the people, or should I say, ‘serving it up to the people’?

THE DUKE - Rudd and Turnbull are responsible for the revolting people on news.com - they’ve given them ‘oxygen’ to air their hateful comments. I won’t be adding to my depression by reading them. Been there, done that - before!

As for the World Bank and the IMF. Take a look at what happened to every country these pack of bastards have interfered with. Loans with impossible interest rates that they knew would keep them bankrupt and in the pocket of corporate america, for as long as they wished. Argentina and other countries in the area. Take a look at ‘The Fourth World War’?

Couldn’t agree more, the IMF is definitely part of the old world order.

Cliff,

I think the point with Rudd is that he umm’d and rrr’d about where he stood and what he was going to do. He couldn’t make a decision and that reflected poorly on him as our leader.

I’m not sure about your later comment saying that people are happy with his way rather than Howards way is absolutely true. Some readers comments posted on news.com are repulsive and in fact, I’d say that most of the readers comments do not want to see them set foot on Aussie soil.

The Duke: Neither the World Bank nor the IMF are UN agencies. At any rate they (in particular the IMF) are a foundational part of the old World Order, not a new one.

Is it possible that Rudd can actually get through his first term without making an effective hard decision? his procrastination on the ‘boat people’ issue was quite concerning for me.

I’ll give him credit, he has been proactive on the symbolic side, but I can’t really think of any quality hard decisions he has made off the top of my head.

Start by asking yourselves what they have in common? They are both globalists. I believe that they both regard the UN as the final authority over any national government. They both talk about a New World Order. They both seem inclined towards an education system that turns out “human capital” for global employers rather than critical thinkers. They appear willing to ratify any direction emanating from (in my view) corrupt and moribund UN agencies such as WHO, UNESCO, IMF and World Bank to name a few. Both are elites who operate outside the normal sphere . Therefore, reluctantly I am forced to conclude that the present Liberal leader is just selling the blows the present PM seems to be able to land at will?
There may be others in the party who think the same, as evidenced by their reluctance to go along with the latest global taxation scam called the ETS. No one that smart could act that inept for so long without a script; in my sceptical view.

On the other hand, Rudd also knows he can’t ‘be soft’ on the issue (to use the appalling terminology of the zeitgeist) since he’ll lose some of the outer suburbian vote previously dubbed ‘Howard’s Battlers’. The union run anti-Work Choices campaign delivered many of them back to Labor, but this remains an issue as much as we’d like to tell ourselves we are much more ‘sophisticated’ than we were in regards to the Tampa etc.

Really, on a purely political level, there is very little than Rudd can actually be seen to be doing that will gain him anything, and much that can be lost. To me it’s no surprise that the rhetoric is mixed (hardline but humane) and Rudd is keeping his hands as free of this as possible. I’m sure this indecisive inaction has lost him some support, but I’m not at all convinced that it lost him more than he would of following any particular decisive approach.

I’m sure Rudd is far better briefed on National opinion than those of us that rely on Newspoll, Morgan, Nielsen and Essential (and Possum to tell us what it all means!) and as far as I can see his actions (and calculated inactions) have remained as carefully chosen to keep his standing as high as possible as ever.