Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

"The Government’s current policy direction on Aborigines, which has gained momentum in recent months, has all of the hallmarks of the assimilationism that led to the stolen generation. The methods and the rhetoric are far subtler – and obviously less cruel - than those of the Government’s predecessors, but the aim is identical and arguably just as pernicious: the assimilation of Aborigines into the mainstream.": David Curry

"Most of us remember the day of the September 11 terrorist attacks with photographic clarity. We remember our horror at the footage of the plane slamming into the World Trade Tower, and banal details such as where we were and who was with us when we first heard the news. Muslim Australians remember all this, but they also remember something else: they were suddenly treated very differently.": David Curry

"If every first world country adopted Australia’s approach the protection of refugees under the Convention would collapse. As UNHCR put it, the Howard Government’s new measures 'would be an unfortunate precedent, being for the first time … that a country with a fully functioning and credible asylum system, in the absence of anything approximating a mass influx, decides to transfer elsewhere the responsibility to handle claims made actually on the territory of the state' ": David Curry