I'm sorely tempted to not write about asylum seekers. I really don't want to. It's too awful. But my conscience compels me. It seems like every time I write an article about this, the story is worse than the last one. The last time I wrote, our government was complaining that while the Human Rights Commission was criticising them for holding children in detention and the United Nations was highlighting their failure to respect the human rights of asylum seekers in general, no-one was was giving them credit for the amazing human rights achievement of preventing people from drowning at sea. Mind you, they have never presented a scrap of evidence that they have done this. They have prevented boatloads of people from arriving in Australia by intercepting them on the way here and sending them back, but there is no evidence that I have seen about where they end up. Now we are seeing just how hollow this claim is. It is becoming clear that something like 8,000 asy
'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