Its a floodgate... of votes

So, we voted Howard out. The Herd warned we could be wearing rose coloured glasses -  it seems the tint has worn off and someone has handed out those aeroplane eye masks that don't quite fit and have a slightly odd smell.

Immigration Minister Chris Evans has announced that Sri Lanka and Afghanistan are safe countries to live and that Australia will no longer be processing asylum seekers from these countries. Umm... is that the same Afghanistan where  DFAT says don't go  and where Australian troops are presently 'keeping the peace'? And is that the same Sri Lanka where DFAT says to reconsider travel due to political tension?

And what the hell happened to assessing asylum seekers as individuals? That is Australian law, that is international law? Have all the Government's legal advisers taken leave at once or has this Government re-employed Howard's team.

Almost 100% of recent asylum seekers to Australia from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka have been found by our already rigorous system to be genuine refugees -  but to Evans this does not matter.

What benefit is there is grouping asylum seekers together in regional bundles. Just ask talk-back radio and tabloid press: fear. It's "them", "they" are illegal. Call them all one big unlawful group and you remove the mother, the teenager, the father trying to protect his family in the only way left  - it's simple, remove the human and its much easier to have inhumane policy.

I am appalled to be living in a country that has reverted to racism, that lacks compassion, that has complete disregard for international law and where the Government can get away with using people's trauma and despair to gain votes from a public who don't bother to think about the reality.
Getting on a boat and trying to seek aslyum in a country so foreign to your own is not a choice -  its a matter of survival.