Next year (2011-12) the Government will spend $709 million in asylum seeker detention and related costs. This is up $147 million on this year (2010-11) and amounts to about $90,000 for every asylum seeker that comes to Australia.

The abolition of mandatory detention of asylum seekers, which means mainly boat people, could save between $150 and $425 million per annum.

In chiding the Chinese about their human rights, Julia Gillard said that we believe (in human rights) … it is us. It’s an Australian value. How can she say this when we have 6,819 asylum seekers in detention in Australia who are entitled to our legal protection and hopefully, our compassion? — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Watching a report on asylum seekers on 7.30 tonight, one of our daughters spoke up unexpectedly: I don’t understand. Shouldn’t we help them? Why do they keep talking about how they should stop the boats?

Yes, we should help them, I said.

Then why do they want to stop the boats? What’s wrong with the boat people?

We tried to explain that there was nothing wrong with asylum seekers, that they were scared people who couldn’t live in their home countries any longer because of war or not being allowed to practise their religion. That sometimes they needed to leave so urgently that they made a risky trip in a boat halfway across the world to look for a country that would let them live there.

So we should help them, but why don’t people want them to come here? — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Police must avoid the temptation to abuse anti-terrorism laws by using them as a net to round up innocent people — particularly in the run-up to next year’s Olympics, the Government’s terrorism watchdog has warned — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Enter the Victorian branch of the Australian Education Union, that on Friday called for all monies going to ACCESS Ministries to be withdrawn. Citing ACCESS volunteers who taught their young charges gems like, Buddha is Satan’s friend, the union said that Paddison’s comments were an affront to students in a our secular government schools and a clear breach of the federal guidelines for the national school chaplaincy program [that prohibit proselytising].

The AEU’s stance follows that take by Professor Gary Bouma, an Anglican Priest and the UNESCO chairman of Interreligious and Intercultural Relations. Denouncing the ACCESS curriculum as crap, Bouma bemoaned an education department ill equipped to stand up to religious bullies like ACCESS. Several days later, he signed an open letter with a handful of other religious and social inclusion experts. Addressed to Federal and State decision-makers, including the Prime Minister, it called for the replacement of scripture with general religious education taught by trained teachers, not evangelical Christian volunteers — via redwolf.newsvine.com