Comments about Tamil asylum seekers by the Sri Lankan High Commissioner to Australia, Mr Senaka Walgampaya, provide a strong reason why the asylum seekers should not be returned to Sri Lanka. Is also makes it almost certain they will meet the criteria of Refugee Convention, even if they didn’t before.
Mr Walgampaya, who speaks of course [...]
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Monthly Archives: October 2009
No No Nanny State
October 29, 2009 – 4:55 pm
The Right – speaking monolithically, of course – is exercised, no pun intended, by the Government’s legislation for a National Preventive Health Agency. The bill has been delayed by the Senate while it awaits the provision of a related report by the Government.
And no they’re not exercised by the fact that it is bloodywell preventative [...]
If I want to laugh at women, I’ll give them a map to read*
October 29, 2009 – 10:57 am
David Letterman’s recent troubles – boffing members of the young female staff – has given a less-than-gruntled ex-staffer the opportunity to fire a pot-shot at the sexist culture of the Letterman (and every other) writers’ room.
To this old writers’-room-runner and participant, it sounds like the standard whinge, which ignores both the nature of comedy [...]
Oh I DO like to be beside the seaside
October 28, 2009 – 9:39 am
My word, we are such a godawfully idiotic species.
I could only laugh last night as our television networks swarmed all over a Parliamentary committee report – a report by a group of politicians, so that makes it special – about the threat posed by rising sea levels.
The report might have been concerned about the fact [...]
One of us! One of us! One of us!
October 27, 2009 – 11:17 pm
Lateline gives us another classic – the Tony Abbott interview, in which the mad Monk suggests that the problem with the Indonesian solution is that it is less humane than the Pacific solution.
Wow.
So now, the refugee debate has switched to how humane the various responses are?
I don’t think so-
Libertarianism: freedom mission? abort! abort!
October 27, 2009 – 3:08 pm
Sinclair Davidson’s post in the daily tells you everything you need to know about the problems besetting libertarianism in Australia.Davidson focuses on the new laws surrounding abortion provision in Victoria – which oblige a doctor with a conscientious objection to abortion, to refer a woman seeking such a procedure to a doctor that the [...]
Coalition defends allowances to the death
October 27, 2009 – 1:44 pm
The Coalition joint party room, with the encouragement of Malcolm Turnbull, today rebelled against the Government’s restrictions on MPs’ printing allowances, which were curtailed in early September after a damning report from the Auditor-General prompted the Prime Minister and Special Minister of State Joe Ludwig to quickly to reduce allowances and curb their use.
Coalition MPs [...]
Panic and fund
October 26, 2009 – 6:07 pm
Australia ‘must prepare for cyber attack’, according to internet security experts. We only have a few years to prepare for a potential cyber attack that could cripple our infrastructure.
Nats – ask not for whom the pendulum er pendules
October 26, 2009 – 2:52 pm
The new pendulum reminds us of a theme alluded to in previous Crikey reports, and picked up by the poison dwarf on the weekend – if the Nationals don’t do something, they’re going out backwards. Two of the Coalition’s seats in the nine seat ‘lagoon’ – which Labor need only a 1.5% swing to [...]
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