Yep his own Labor colleagues branded him a psycho, seems like they were right

Diuretic going off what you have posted, it appears the drongo vote at this stage is sitting squarley with Kevin 07, oops sorry, Rudd miester 13. Taking the sudden massive jump in the polls. Lol.

I do understand what you are alluding to, and agree. You call it the drongo vote, I call it personality politics. The other day I was told by a lady that if the coalition was led by Joe Hockey she would vote for them, but because he isn't she will vote Labor. WTF !

first, don't get me wrong Joe seems like a nice bloke, but never has he seemed like leader material to me, let alone PM. Secondly, because of such a thing she is going to vote completely opposite. I couldn't help myself and confronted her with the reality of what she said. She responded by saying, who cares their all the same, they only go in it to rip us all off.

I shrugged and walked away in a cloud of no hope.

 

So simply going against the constitution would have saved lives? The fact that there was no arrangement for "processing" is missed on you isn't it? It was a straight out exchange that Australia lost on. And the high court challenge was not committed by the opposition but a refugee group opposed to the ALP plan. No amount of bipartisan support would have made that policy go ahead. You do know what unconstitutional is?

As to the signatory issue... Rudd made much light of the fact he was scrapping the Coalition's policy because overseas processing centres where in countries that were not signatory to the UN Convention. The ALP was simply going to Malaysia simply to avoid any idea that they were going back to a coalition policy.

Just imagine, if they did not go to the election telling everybody they had a better solution and left the original policy those deaths would not have occurred in the first place.

LOL... So the fact that Australia is committing to support and work with other countries to address that very point is more than that country would want to commit to? Don't you consider that those countries have to commit to them anyway? We are not talking about just dumping at the door and running away. We are talking about comprehensively taking responsibility of Australia's commitments. So I am guessing, you would rather scale down the influx of asylum-seekers by making the system harder and more dangerous to scare them away?

I think maybe you were hoodwinked, do you really consider that a high-court challenge on the constitutional legalities was simply a political point scoring venture? Don't you think it may have been against the constitution? The very fact that this demonstrates how some people think is amazing. The Malaysia solution was against the constitution, it is that simple. No amount of politicking could have gotten that through, so your assumption of being a credible solution. The fact that it also was a simple swap of a small amount of asylum-seekers with a larger amount is simply stupid. This was the policy of the grossly stupid, not a foresighted government and everybody knew about except the ALP and apparently you.

 

Look, I should go back a little here. I think you’re right that about the way it was so easy to demonise these people. Of course, I would like to excuse the racism of the time, but truth is, the minority group of racists in Australia made it so easy for Howard to present and demonise them.

Previous governments may have had all good intentions by getting tougher, but it was fuel for the ignorant. When more people began to arrive from other countries it was easy for governments and oppositions to influence the people. Union’s being the biggest promoter of job losses over new arrivals really made it hard. Considering this was simply to undermine government (both sides stupidly enough) to get what they wanted at the time from the government.

I would suggest that all these actions, being small and large all contributed to the current attitudes. It starts small and like a snowball builds momentum. It disgusts me that the situation could be brought to a point where people really consider deaths of anybody is worth considering to prevent people from arriving.

Unfortunately, in the near future you are right. I often see calls by people to come together for the common interests. Labour v business… I have seen that it really is starting to dawn on people that both sides are important and need to work with each other is important for the survival of Australia. But major groups, such as the Unions and the ALP (not that I consider them so stupid as to not understand this, only that they have no idea how to bring it together while vested interest in them are against) continue to stand opposed. Many workers, realise that If they continue the way of the past, Australia will eventually implode. But that is a long way off.

But joint effort on the boat people will not occur, because it wins elections. It supports Union’s false allegations of job losses and it would mean that (IMHO) the problem would be hidden from the general public.

So I think we can agree that we are on the same page here.