All is not well in the asylum

There is much to recommend Australia, and it is not the only country in the world to spawn figures such as Mr Ruddock and Mr Howard, but what is it about the island mentality that so fears a handful - and even 10,000 asylum seekers is a handful - coming to our vast coastline and being welcomed?

Why won't Mr Rudd end that other monstrous Ruddock policy, the excision of islands off our coast, so that if asylum seekers land there they are not in Australia?

Why is Mr Rudd leaning on Indonesia, a nation that can barely feed itself, to take care of asylum seekers heading our way?

What does it say about the concept of nationhood in this country that a prime minister can thump the table in devious and calculating mock rage in 2001, declare that we decide who comes into this country, and get re-elected?

And perhaps most importantly, what does it say about our media that they give space and airtime to a man who locked up beautiful, innocent little children for years on end?

Edmund Burke, that great 18th century humanitarian whose name is taken in vain by today's conservatives, wrote: "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." This aphorism, now 239 years old, has never been more relevant to Australia today on the question of asylum seekers.