Get election happening quickly

In an article written prior to his original bid to lead the Labor Party, Kevin Rudd wrote passionately about the question of asylum seekers.

"Another great challenge of our age is asylum seekers.

"The biblical injunction to care for the stranger in our midst is clear.

"The parable of the Good Samaritan is but one of the many which deal with the matter of how we should respond to the vulnerable stranger in our midst."

However, as Mr Rudd recently said: "Times change and adjustments have to be made."

Now 100 per cent of the asylum seekers have become economic refugees (as declared by Senator Bob Carr), they will be shipped off to Papua New Guinea forever.

So much for caring for strangers in our midst.

Where this leaves those who have been assuring us over the last six years that the asylum seekers were genuine refugees fleeing from danger and persecution and should be allowed (indeed in some cases encouraged) to come to Australia I do not know.

Similarly, "the greatest moral challenge of our time" (global warming) seems to have changed somewhat and although we have all been told that the Carbon Tax was not affecting our cost of living, Mr Rudd now seems to think that moving to an emission trading scheme would benefit us all to the tune of $380 a year, (but, as it turns out, for only one year) notwithstanding no one has the slightest idea of how much carbon credits will be worth in Europe next year.

As one pundit put it this week, we have now effectively tied ourselves and our economic future to the very unstable and problematical Euro currency.

I just hope the pending election happens quickly so that Kevin Rudd does not have to come up with anymore very surprising adjustments (not that I would be so crass as to suggest that Mr Rudd has made these decisions to improve his party's electoral chances).

Email, 21 Jul 2013

Vic Jefferies, St Huberts Island