Monday, August 21, 2006

keep out?


This is old news but good news. It just goes to show that even a majority in the Senate doesn't make the rubber stamping any easier. In short, the Howard Government was trying to pass a bill that would mean that anyone landing on our Australian shores could be dumped into offshore processing centres. Fortunately the old fear card, which partly won the Howard government another term (A Howard slogan-hordes of people, particularly terrorists and the sort of people who would throw their children overboard were going to arrive unannounced and unwanted because we were percieved as an easy target for people smugglers) hasn't worked in the governments favour. A few dissenting voices talking about human rights and international law forewarned our wiley PM and he had to scuttle the bill before the public embarrasment of a defeat in the Senate.

3 comments:

scout said...

this is good news. will howard and his proponents soon be calling anyone who's not white 'brown-skinned, australian-born" like Canada's neo-con media and politicians?

austin said...

I've been heading down the real wilddog so maybe the blog was waiting to get home before showing comments? Nice to know some things never change?!
I think we should keep solar planets for the real martians.
Good lord, scout. I thought our guys were bad but that takes the cake!

scout said...

this is why i put tongue in cheek about science....what's true today may not be true tomorrow....what was true a hundred years ago can sseem absurd today....not that there aren't merits to science, don't get me wrong.

ya austin, it's gotten pretty bad here. at the same time it's exposing a side of canada many have refused to look at and deal with.....these people have always been around, they're just in the seat of power now. should be waking a lot of canuks up, we are an apathetic lot.