Rights

Australian judges have lashed out at Prime Minister Julia Gillard, saying it was irresponsible of her to criticise the High Court over the Malaysian asylum seeker decision.

The backlash comes one day after Ms Gillard was forced to dismiss speculation of a leadership plot against her in the wake of her scathing attack on the court’s ruling.

Ms Gillard told the ABC’s Madonna King yesterday: I’m not going anywhere, after earlier blaming the court for missing an opportunity to combat people smuggling in the region.

I’m the best person to do this job. And I’ll continue to do it. And what this job is about is leading the nation to a better future, she said — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The High Court rejection of the Malaysia Solution is almost certainly the beginning of the end of the Labor Government. Even more likely, the end of Julia Gillard’s ignominious Prime Ministership.

This, folks, is what you get when the order of the day is trimming, compromising, placating and general brown-nosing. It is not a sustainable model of government.

You can’t win over the racists who don’t want any brown and yellow people coming here, no matter how they come, which is the core constituency chanting stop the boats.

Everyone else has long since worked out that any offshore processing solution is both ridiculously expensive and inhumanly cruel.

Labor needs to turn this around with a frank acknowledgement that refugees, however they get here, are Australia’s problem and need to be dealt with by the Australian Government on Australian soil.

Without a truly bold stroke that cuts through all the crap, they’re gone, and Tony Abbott is our new PM.

The ludicrous expense of offshoring probably provides the way to do it. If you can’t sell the notion of processing people onshore, in or near our capital cities, where help and support is readily available to assimilate the influx, on the basis of simple humanity – and that is how low we have sunk – you can at least make a decent fist of selling it on economic grounds. Protect the budget surplus!

Onshore management of refugees is faster and cheaper, and delivers less-damaged people sooner. Provided with language teaching, social integration services, legal support and surrounded by members of their own ethnic community, refugees integrate into Australian society far sooner and better, and become a net economic benefit to the country, rather than a drain.

As it is, we are spending millions of dollars on something which, if truth be told, is nothing more than a vast bribe for the votes of racist rednecks — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The government’s Malaysia Solution has been scuttled by the High Court. The government is casting about for alternatives. The opposition is gloating and urging a revival of the Pacific Solution and reintroduction of temporary protection visas. Both need to step back and take a good look at what they are trying to do, apart from political point-scoring — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Bob Katter shouldn’t hold his breath waiting for an invitation to his brother Carl’s wedding, should such an event occur.

Only a week ago the big-hatted Queensland MP told a rally of Christians and family advocates in Canberra that the very idea of gay marriage deserves to be laughed at and ridiculed — it doesn’t deserve any serious treatment.

His brother Carl last night burst on to the nation’s television screens to announce that, as it happened, he was homosexual — and if he met a man he’d like to spend his life with, he’d hope to marry him — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Talkback host Alan Jones fired up a crowd of protesters to turn on a Herald reporter today after she asked if he had been paid to appear at the rally in Canberra.

Journalist Jacqueline Maley said Jones looked outraged when she asked him if he had accepted a fee to be at the rally, made up of protesters who converged on Canberra in trucks, caravans and cars.

She said he had angrily asked her what kind of a question was that and who did she think she was — via redwolf.newsvine.com