Boat people sympathy seems to be winning

Sympathy may be winning. Perhaps I mix in the wrong circles but I have not yet noticed any surge in anti-boat people feeling. Among my associates there is a growing sympathy towards people desperate enough to try to get to Australia on fragile wooden boats rather than a demand for our government to take tougher action. And that sentiment is right across the political spectrum.

Bring out a Brit. The pollster Gallup has looked at where in Europe has the greatest proportion of people who would prefer to be living somewhere else. And the winner is? The United Kingdom.

A nice little slap in the face of a colleague. Environment Minister Tony Burke has given his colleague and Peter Garrett a nasty little rebuff by deciding to totally ignore the work the former Environment Minister did on over-hauling Australia’s environment laws. In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald,  Burke said he had requested fresh advice from his department on the recommendations of the review, which was headed by the former senior bureaucrat Dr Alan Hawke. Burke said he had not asked to see Garrett’s cabinet submission: ”I have only asked the department for advice from scratch.”

Extradited for questioning? In all the stories about the efforts to extradite Julian Assange from Britain to Sweden, the one thing that confuses me are the references to the Swedish prosecutor wanting to question him about offences rather than have him appear in court to answer charges. The Guardian on Saturday attempted to explain but I am still confused.