Paul Sheehan exposes Rudd’s complete hypocrisy over illegal immigration:
…Australia has no obligation to accept a single non-citizen not in danger of persecution.
This principle is the bedrock of Australian law and politics. Non-citizens are not entitled to self-select as residents before their bona fides have been established. A government that cannot or will not maintain this principle will eventually fall, because the overwhelming majority of Australians, shown in survey after survey, accepts this bedrock principle.
If there were a viable federal opposition in Canberra, the Rudd Government would be embarrassed. But as there is a distracted opposition, the Government can bluster at will.
So we have the Indonesian Solution, which involves building detention centres in Indonesia to process people’s claims. I think this just encourages illegal immigration, but would things be different if Tony Abbott was the Opposition leader? Possibly.