Miss Anne Dryst wrote on Dec 16^th, 2010 at 6:13pm:


Yes and now the Libs are showing their hypocrisy by doing exactly the same thing.
Which is why I fully endorse Prevailing's call for REVOLUTION!

Postmodern Trendoid III wrote on Dec 16^th, 2010 at 6:28pm:



havent got a clue what any of that meant... .

Miss Anne Dryst wrote on Dec 16^th, 2010 at 6:47pm:



So Julia Gillard put people on a boat?

Postmodern Trendoid III wrote on Dec 16^th, 2010 at 6:28pm:



havent got a clue what any of that meant...

havent got a clue what any of that meant... but I have jst watched jooooooolia on ABC,, where she has talked and talked and said nothing..

what a boring woman this is... and these people are drowning and she says NOTHING...just rhetorics...

she shouldnt be allowed to resign.. she should be sacked.. this whole company.[laughingly called a govt] is a disgrace.

Postmodern Trendoid III wrote on Dec 16^th, 2010 at 7:01pm:



Is Andrew Bolt in government?

The day both extremes almost met in the middle


by Tory Maguire

16 Dec 04:00pm

54 comments

Julia Gillard is not just between a rock and a hard place in the aftermath of the Christmas Island tragedy - she’s wedged between an angry Left and a rabid Right.

It was hardly unexpected that Andrew Bolt and his gang quickly trotted out the “blood on her hands” mantra after dozens of asylum-seekers met their awful deaths yesterday, but they’ve been joined by a loud chorus of refugee advocates claiming the atrocity could have been prevented with a softer government policy.

The only people not attacking the Prime Minister today are the Opposition, who’ve remained for the past 24 hours particularly civil towards Gillard and her Immigration Minister Chris Bowen. And Gillard’s announcement this afternoon of a standing group including the Opposition and representatives from the Greens to examine the fact of the boat’s sinking could well prolong that cease-fire beyond the usual limits.

Gillard broke her summer holiday this afternoon to give a press conference in Sydney - where she was unable to shed much light on the how the vessel went undetected by Australian border authorities until 5.48am Christmas Island time yesterday, when it was already “hard up” against the cliffs and “clearly in distress”.

The facts, the Prime Minister said, needed to be established before judgements could be made about what, if any, culpability her government’s policy held. “These conversations will be had, as they should be had,” she said. But not today.

Instead, by including shadow immigration minister Scott Morrison and and shadow attorney-general Michael Keenan in a “bi-partisan reporting mechanism”, Gillard has made it very difficult for them to start bleating about who’s responsible.

(Update 7pm: The Opposition has declined Gillard’s offer to take part.)

Gillard said she neither sought, nor received, any undertaking from Tony Abbott that in exchange for inclusion on the standing committee the Opposition would lay off the finger pointing.

It’s a tenuous truce, considering the very loud, very acrimonious debate going on outside the mainstream political parties today.

Bolt’s not the only one saying the tragedy was an inevitable result of the Rudd/Gillard softening of the Howard-era border protection stance. It’s undeniable the rate of boat arrivals has increased exponentially since 1998, from the trickle it was towards the end of the Coalition government.

Something’s made the Indonesian people smugglers and their desperate clients think it’s worth the risk to make the mad dash to Australian waters.

But international coverage of the disaster has taken a different tack. Numerous overseas media outlets, such as the UK Independent, are reporting Gillard is under pressure to soften the government’s border protection policy, not toughen it up.

They’re basing this analysis on comments from refugee advocates such as Pino Migliorino, chairman of the Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia, who called the incident a “wake-up call” for the government, and Ian Rintoul from the Refugee Action Coalition, who said “unless the government changes its policies and adopts a welcome refugee policy, there will be more tragedies.”

Gillard has managed to upset both sides of the ledger equally.

They both say they want the same thing - to avoid more loss of life. In fact, headlines such as “Refugee policy blamed for wreck” could equally be applied to stories about the response from either camp.

They just have very different ways of getting there.

Regardless, Gillard can only continue to put off the conversation that “should be had” for a short period. Her adherence to the weak “push factor” argument when asked this afternoon to explain the huge increase in boat arrivals just doesn’t cut it.

Sadly for the lefties calling for her to open the gates, Gillard will be unable to ignore stories such as this report showing a massive majority of respondents to an online poll today have no sympathy for asylum-seekers, even in light of the terrible scenes of Christmas Island.

The Right and Left might have met in the middle today, but it won’t last long.