word for word, this had to be said, and I didn't have the courage or ability to put it as well as you did

From my own POV I would just want strict immigration laws, yes - but mainly to filiter out genuine undesirables and menaces .. and in practical terms yes that does mean, along with troublemakers from other backgrounds, a certain small proportion of Muslim immigrants. Obviously ..

but more importantly your 'report' on the nasty inhumanity which grew out of selfish fear in this country, in the last 10 years or so, needs to be read and bookmarked (which I did)

BTW, other readers here might not appreciate the fear of the outsider which must have marked this country from the beginning. Because, unlike say North America which from earliest times of European immigration, must have been a wonderful, bounteous frontier, the European experience in Australia was that of being plonked half a world away into a totally weird, bizarre and hostile environment. Then, we eventually mastered this environment (by building cities which safely hug the coastline).

But the historical memory remains, that we are recent arrivals here in this strange arid and ancient place and I think this makes for a certain insecurity and fear of vulnerability. Then couple this to the obsessive concern about middle-class material security and what do we end up with? Exactly what you describe.

For gossakes, even hard-as-nails Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott has had enough -

An Indonesian journalist whose 70-year-old mother is gravely ill has been deported in the face of pleas from the federal Health Minister that he be allowed to stay.

Juliati Mardoyo, who has been in Australia for 25 years and is a permanent resident, lives alone in a housing commission flat in Bass Hill. Widowed, with no other close relatives in Australia, she pleaded with the Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, to allow her son, Indra, to stay in the country as her sole carer.

But the pleas were not enough to persuade the minister, even when the office of the Health Minister, Tony Abbott, intervened. His office sent an urgent fax to Senator Vanstone on September 27 asking for the case to be reconsidered.

"Minister, please give consideration to granting permanent residency to Mr Mardoyo, or allowing an onshore visa application," it read. "This would ensure ongoing care for his mother."

Mr Mardoyo was deported the next day. It is, say advocates, another example of the falsehoods in the Government's assertion that there has been a shift in the culture of the Department of Immigration.

A detainee advocate, Brian Davies, said it was unlikely Indra Mardoyo would see his mother again. "Are we so lacking in compassion, so barren of feeling about humanitarian priorities opposed by statues, that we, Australia, condemn an old lady of 70 years to life without the companionship of the one child who is able to continue supporting her?" he asked.

Mrs Mardoyo suffers from diabetes, cataracts, thyroid problems and dyslipidemia. Medical reports reveal she will lose her physical independence as problems with her spine and her knee increase.

To help calibrate the tone here, many US readers would find Tony Abbott to be an outspoken, tough and ruthless rightwinger. I well remember moderate centrist American visitors here shaking their heads in dismay at his posturings on TV.

So - what does that make 'Mandy Flintstone' and 'Little Johnny Rotten' then ..?