The management of News Ltd's flagship The Australian assures us that they don't have a political agenda, they just report the news as they see it. If that's the case, then they see things in a slightly odd way. Or perhaps it's better to say they see some things, but not others. For the past two Saturdays The Weekend Australian has featured pretty much identical cover stories about the refugee issue. Yesterday's was entitled Too Poor for a Boat, Family Stuck in Asylum Void , and features the story of Burmese Chin refugee Ngun Tin Tial and her family, stuck in Kuala Lumpur after fleeing persecution in their homeland and living in legal limbo, earning a meagre living in the grey economy. They would like to come to Australia and have got some way along the application process. However, the wait is long, and apparently being made longer by the fact that when Australia accepts boat arrivals, these are counted towards our overall refugee and humanitatian quota of
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson