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A boat disappeared on 28 June, the 67 people on board presumed dead. The usual dysfunctional patterns of official behaviour followed: tardy response to families, insensitive language, political exploitation. Hopefully the Houston report's quiet hints that all is not well might lead to a more compassionate and timely response in future.
Can Abbott and Morrison be serious about turning back the boats? Do they really want to expose the Navy to the fear, the rage, the encouragement to self-harm and lethal criminality, the emotional damage, the risks to Australian-Indonesian relations that have beset past turn-back policies?
When distress calls come from asylum seeker boats, Australia's current policy is to rescue by choice. Many of the calls come from the Indonesian search and rescue region. To its credit, Australia usually responds to these calls. But not always. Sometimes we pass them to the less well equipped Indonesian search and rescue authority BASARNAS and wait to see what happens.
A Herald/Neilsen poll this week showed that Rudd leads Gillard by 62 per cent to 32 per cent. But that figure is distorted by the overwhelming pro-Rudd preference of Coalition voters, who prefer Rudd to Gillard by 71 per cent to 19 per cent. The motivation behind this preference is not immediately clear.
Retiring Greens leader Bob Brown is not the avuncular teddy-bear politician some paint him as. He and new leader Christine Milne share the same steel and political acumen. The next promising generation of Greens leaders will be nurtured and grow under Milne's leadership. And there are many of them.
Minority government has presented unique challenges to Gillard and her team, to which they have responded with dignity, clarity and efficiency. Politics in the Australian party system is a team sport, and it's clear Kevin Rudd has a thing or two to learn about loyalty and solidarity.
The US today is a nervous nation. The old small town verities and values can no longer be taken for granted in this apprehensive, celebrity-drugged culture. Conceivably, if the economy tanks or there is some destabilising foreign policy crisis, Newt Gingrich could beat Obama.
Catholics in Australia have tended to be more tolerant of alcohol and gambling than 'wowser' Protestants. But too many Catholics turn a blind eye to how today's poker machine technology and operating environment is designed to nurture dangerous (but profitable) addiction.
The latest tragedy comes ten years after SIEV X and a year after the Christmas Island shipwreck. It will be exploited by both Gillard and Abbott to further their border protection policies. Questions surround the disaster that the Australian Government would prefer not be asked.
If Julian Assange is soon extradited from UK to Sweden, as now seems likely, he faces rendition to the US, and the prospect of a long prison sentence or even assassination. The Australian Government continues to do almost nothing to protect its besieged citizen.
Australia is now indelibly associated with Obama's strong messages to China in Canberra. We were used. But our government wanted this, because it will all be popular with the middle ground former Labor voters Gillard is trying to win back from Abbott and the Greens.
85-96 out of 175 results.