104 / What are we gonna do with these pesky boat people?

Did you watch Qanda (the ABC panel show)? The issue of asylum seekers arriving by boat got the Liberal replacement for Peter Costello all hot under the collar: "We can't have people jumping the queue" etc.etc

It was Graeme Richardson who made immense sense, when he said something like, "what we need is some bi-partisan action on the issue. It is a nonsense to process the boat people on Christmas Island - they are humans like all of us. Bring them to Australia, assess them properly and deal with them here under humane conditions." Hear, hear.

The minister for small business, Craig Emerson, pointed out that we are talking about a number of some 22,000 boat

people who have arrived in Australia. Not last year. Not over the past two years. Not over the past ten years. No … ever. Think about it.