I’m a day behind schedule with Seat of the Week, owing to the extra work required to give due attention to the seat which matters more than any other. I speak of course of Lindsay, the western Sydney electorate which first emerged as a favoured barometer of national opinion after Labor’s surprise defeat off a double-digit swing in 1996. Its place in electoral folklore was cemented by the 2010 election, when Labor’s apparent obsession with it caused the party’s then national secretary, Karl Bitar, to demand that every proposed policy pass a “Lindsay test”. This was seen to have inspired the shift in prime ministerial rhetoric from Kevin Rudd’s “big Australia” to Julia Gillard’s “sustainable Australia”, and a tougher line on asylum seekers which was signalled in the first days of Gillard’s prime ministership through a photo opportunity with member David Bradbury aboard a warship off Darwin.
Lindsay is based around Penrith 50 kilometres to the west of central Sydney, from which it extends into conservative semi-rural territory to the north (Castlereagh and Llandilo) and south (Mulgoa and Orchard Hills). Labor had a 12.3% notional margin when the seat was created at the 1984 election, and its inaugural member Ross Free held it for margins of around 10% throughout the Hawke-Keating years, having previously been member for Macquarie from 1980. Free was most unpleasantly surprised to find himself turfed out by an 11.9% swing to Liberal candidate Jackie Kelly at the 1996 election, but was able to secure a re-match because Kelly, who had not expected to win, had failed to get her affairs in order before nominating (she was still serving as an RAAF officer, an “office for profit under the Crown”). Voters dragged back to the polls on a technicality rewarded Free with a further 6.8% drop in the primary vote, translating into a further 5.0% swing to the Liberals on two-party preferred.
The combined 16.9% swing to the Liberals meant the electorate’s demographic profile came to be seen as typifying John Howard’s constituency: high numbers of skilled workers on good incomes, low levels of tertiary education and a distinctly less multicultural flavour than suburbs closer to the city. This view was solidified by Kelly’s persistent electoral success despite the area remaining loyal to Labor at state level. The swing to Labor in 1998 was just 0.3% compared with the 1996 election result, producing one of a number of decisive marginal seat outcomes which secured the return of the Howard government from a minority of the two-party vote. This confirmed Kelly’s status as a prime ministerial favourite, helping her win promotion for a time to a junior ministerial position thought by many to have been beyond her competence. Kelly nonetheless continued to perform well electorally, picking up a 2.4% swing in 2001 and nearly holding even in 2004. To John Howard’s dismay, Kelly opted to retire at the 2007 election, at which the seat was further endangered by a redistribution which cut the Liberal margin from 5.3% to 2.9%. Any remaining Liberal hopes, both for Lindsay and the election as a whole, were demolished in the final days of the campaign when the husbands of Kelly and her successor candidate Karen Chijoff were among those caught distributing pamphlets purporting to be from Muslim extremists, in which Labor was praised for its support of the “unjustly” treated Bali bombers.
There followed a resounding 9.7% swing to Labor candidate David Bradbury, a Blake Dawson Waldron lawyer and former Penrith mayor who had run unsuccessfully in 2001 and 2004. There were reports in 2009, denied by Bradbury, that he was not of a mind to run in Lindsay for a fourth time, as he was concerned at the impact of the state government’s unpopularity and hopeful the departure of Roger Price might provide a safer berth for him in Chifley. Labor’s concerns were powerfully reinforced by a devastating 25.7% swing in a by-election for the state seat of Penrith on 19 June 2010, which preceded Kevin Rudd’s demise as Prime Minister by five days. The interruption of the by-election resulted in what seemed an inordinately long delay in the Liberals choosing a candidate, before marketing executive Fiona Scott was finally given the nod less than a week before the election date was announced. In the event the Liberals picked up a swing of 5.2% which only slightly exceeded the 4.8% statewide swing, falling 1.1% short of what was required. The post-election review conducted for the Liberal Party by Peter Reith identified the delay as a failing of the party’s campaign, and recommended the party’s federal executive be given a “last resort” power to ensure the selection of candidates for important seats in good time.
David Bradbury has twice won promotion since his re-election, first to parliamentary secretary to the Treasurer immediately after the election, and then to Assistant Treasurer and Minister Assisting for Deregulation in March 2012 after Kevin Rudd’s unsuccessful leadership challenge. The latter promotion was achieved at the expense of NSW Right colleague Robert McClelland, who was dumped from the ministry after publicly backing Rudd. Bradbury will again be opposed at the next election by Fiona Scott, who won a March 2012 preselection vote against Hills Shire councillor Robyn Preston by 62 votes to 42. It had been reported the previous September that Tony Abbott had approached Jackie Kelly with a view to making a comeback, but she was unequivocal in professing herself uninterested.
GG
I am not a communist not even a pretend labor one so stop with the comrade nonsense.
I have made no reprehensible arguments. You have. You have claimed a party revelling in deaths not me.
Go take a long look in the mirror.
Stop trying to exploit people’s death by claiming those that disagree with you are in any way glad to see people die. It is a pure lie and you know it is a pure lie,
[ So, considering the cost and the risk involved, why would you embark on a sea-crossing from Indonesia to Australia if the eventual destination turned out to be Malaysia?]
Because Indonesia is unacceptable and so the basic problem would persist. Unless your conditions of life are acceptable, aren’t you bound to try remedying them until a remedy is achieved or you die?
[We in Australia should do what we can do deter people from making such voyages. ]
I agree. If this matter were simply about our horror at deaths on the high seas, there is a simple remedy that could pass at breakneck speed through both Houses. The Greens would even support the gillotine to move it quickly. But this problem is not, in the regime’s view, about drownings but about immigration, and punishing the ill-deserving asylum shopping, big-Australia creating, queue-jumping, social security filching, Australian identity-destroying chancers and lurkers that the folks in Lindsay are said to be so troubled by.
Ask yourself this: If instead of a 96% success rate in getting to Christmas Island without sinking there were a 100% success rate, would the government think there wasn’t a problem? It’s hard to imagine. One might add that the Howard regime excised whole parts of Australia’s territory from our “migration zone”. That too increased the difficulty and thus the drownings. Has the ALP restored these places? Set up facilities? No.
[There is absolutely no question that we make a much greater contribution than do the kiwis]
I’m not sure that is true. AIUI, the Kiwis don’t lock up the people we’ve shipped to them. They accepted people from Manus and Nauru without making a song and dance about it.
Disgusting fact it is that the pursuit of wealth and privilege, for themselves and their children, by lowly journalists, has come to the point where they are prepared to aid and abet, for money, a couple of murderers, so that some of these payments were/could be diverted to Marunchak, who had been able to pay off his credit card and pay his child’s private school fees.
@286 The issue is attempted boat arrivals not where the arrivals end up. your definition of success does not reflect what is at stake – border control and SIEVs – not the outcome for the passengers.
CC
You tell yourself that. To the people that get in the boats where they end up is what counts.
[276
guytaur
Rex Douglas
I agree with the long post by Outsider. I have previously said processing in Indonesia would stop the boats if that really is what you want to do.]
I imagine the Indonesians would have something today about this – it is their territory after all. Human trafficking is a criminal activity in Indonesia as much as it is here. Naturally, Indonesia – an independent, sovereign State and not a puppet of the Greens – has its own interests to protect.
briefly
You did not read the post by Outsider.
Compact Crank,
You seem to have a eaten something unpalatable because you are repeating on yourself. Must have been the dodgy Lib policy you consumed last night.
@307 – if it is as you say, why was there only three people in detention and so few boat arrivals by the 2007 election. are you saying the numbers were faked?
Greensborough Growler,
Compact Crank needs to post his half-arskd comments twice just to equal one of ours. 😀
@310 not sure why it is double posting?
CC
Your policy failed. It did not stop immigration by refugees in boats.
Not because of Kevin Rudd.
Because John Howard got lucky. The temporary block coincided with low boat numbers.
These then surged afterwards and swelled the numbers just before Rudd took over. IF Howard had won he would have been faced with the same numbers.
I see Compact Crank is disingenuously using the ebb and flow of history to bolster his fallacious arguments in support of the inhumane policies of the Coalition. Quél surprisé.
[The essential thing to recognize is that the romantic view of desperate refugees nobly escaping from oppressive regimes, while once maybe true (and forming the basis of the Greens’ nostalgic policy), no longer applies.]
Actually, this has rarely been the case in Oz’s post1787 migration: Kulturkämpf & some pre1938 Germans, those fleeing Russian occupation of E Europe or the triumph of Mao’s Communists over the KMD (+ smaller contingents of White Russians & Dutch/ mixed-race Indonesian + some Latin American + refugees from southern African racism – or because of of their own), and more recent MidE & subcontinental migrants’, being the exceptions.
From the Macquarie Era (at the latest) the majority of free settlers have been climate (until very recently) and/or economic refugees. Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s family are climate refugees; a family told that,if they wanted her to live, they had to shift to a warmer, drier climate – a very familiar reason behind many UK migrants’ decisions.
So guytaur spends the best part of the last two days banging on about refugees and then says others are exploiting the drownings at sea?
If you’re worried about it, guytaur, stop making posts on the issue.
If others continue to do so, you can console yourself with the reflection that you’re better than they are (which seems to be one of the main reasons you’re a Green).
Michael Cusack@284.
Exactly.
Guytaur,
You really have lost the plot this morning, comrade.
One thing you Greens can’t hide with this benign indifference AS policy is that it is a crock and that people can, do and will die as a consequence of your pursuit of purity.
FB, the kiwis accept a very small number of refugees….far fewer in proportional terms than we do. As for locking people up, this is an absolutely deplorable consequence of this dog’s breakfast of a situation we now have. This situation could be very easily changed if the Malaysia solution were able to be implemented.
[…..this problem is not, in the regime’s view, about drownings but about immigration, and punishing the ill-deserving asylum shopping, big-Australia creating, queue-jumping, social security filching, Australian identity-destroying chancers and lurkers that the folks in Lindsay are said to be so troubled by….]
This is a complete red herring. Not that I am a part of ‘the regime’, but for the record I do not and have never characterised asylum-seekers in this way. In any case, these polemics do nothing to improve understanding of and responses to this recurring tragedy in which we have a part. Your invective is entirely misdirected, but does serves to prove my point: as long as the boats keep coming, the Greens will find ways to assail Labor.
You should ask yourself if want to prevent more deaths in the future, or if you would prefer to make political capital from them.
fran
[the Kiwis don’t lock up the people we’ve shipped to them. They accepted people from Manus and Nauru without making a song and dance about it.]
And we don’t make a song and dance about accepting people who’ve been processed in Manus and Nauru, either.
[@307 – if it is as you say, why was there only three people in detention and so few boat arrivals by the 2007 election. are you saying the numbers were faked?]
The only salient point is that Nauru was banned by the High Court.
Whether it worked once or not, it is now illegal without the change to the Immigration Act that the government has offered the Opposition, but which they have refused.
While Nauru is a signatory to the Convention, this is not enough for the new High Court rules. It must have a history in its own right of dealing with asylum seekers, which it does not. It must have a “reflex” of the Australian legal system, which it does not. It have have opportunities for the education of children, a functioning court system, enmployment opportunities and so on, all of which it does not have.
It has a piece of paper that says it’s a signatory to the Convention, but nothing in a practical sense to back that up, certainly not in the numbers that are anticipated.
Once upon a time we had a legal land title system based on terra nullius. That was only because it had not been taken to the High court. When it finally was (the Mabo case) it was thrown out.
Likewise, we once had a system where the Minister could send people anywhere he liked for off-shore processing. But that, like terra nullius, was only because it had not been tested in the High Court. Now that it has been tested, it’s been shown to be illegal.
Why is that so hard to understand CC?
We need a change to the law to allow off-shore processing. This change would benefit BOTH the government AND the Opposition, when (or if) they ever win an election and get the chance to run the program.
All the rest – the “canings”, the faux concern for boat people (whose alternative is to drown at sea) – is blather.
If the Malaysian solution doesn’t work then the government will pay the price. Abbott will have his victory, doubly so. If he’s so sure it won’t work why would he, the Grand Opportunist, deny the government the chance to be humiliated?
His argument is bullshit, as is yours.
And just how do you propose to make the boats “better”
Surely pouring money into the camps to take them up to UNESCO standard and speeding up the processing in those camps, which is what the MS seeks to do, is better then any boat ?
zoomster
I already pointed out I have only been making the point that people claiming the Greens are responsible for people drowning at sea are in fact lying.
They are the ones doing the exploiting.
I am quite willing to have a policy discussion that is civilised.
GG does not do this. He spouts the nonsense that anyone that disagrees with his position in this case the greens have benign indifference which is a climb down from earlier posts.
GG has gone from the Greens are responsible for deaths at sea to their policies encourage deaths at sea or some such.
I will not let it pass. Claim the Greens are wrong on policy all you want.
Just do not lie and say the Greens in any way welcome or are indifferent to drownings at sea.
That is a lie and I will contest it.
[We need a change to the law to allow off-shore processing. This change would benefit BOTH the government AND the Opposition, when (or if) they ever win an election and get the chance to run the program.
All the rest – the “canings”, the faux concern for boat people (whose alternative is to drown at sea) – is blather.]
Here here. But for the record if I have a choice between a caning and drowning, I’ll take the caning. I hear some even pay for such a service weekly, so it can’t be that bad can it?
Drowning on the other hand is quite bad.
WeWantPaul
There you go using exploitation again. You want people not to drown. Put your money where your mouth is and lobby the government to fly them here.
Continually referring to drowning is your hypocrisy following exactly the political methods of John Howard.
[Stop trying to exploit people’s death by claiming those that disagree with you are in any way glad to see people die.]
I chipped you for doing exactly this yesterday morning.
Bit rich for you to now be trying to claim the moral high ground.
Guytaur,
The Greens position supports on shore processing of any AS that make it to Australia. AS’s die trying to make it to Australia by boat. You’d have to be Christine Milne to conclude there is no link.
Stubborn denial of the truth is quirky Greens characteristic. You’ve got it in spades, comrade.
guytaur
Well, that’s a bit of a shift from your previous stance that we shouldn’t worry about deaths at sea because it’s nothing to do with us.
I thought it was either the fault of poor Indonesian shipping standards or a lifestyle choice on the part of refugees?
Either way, up until now, you didn’t seem to think it was something we should be troubling ourselves about.
“Meet the Press’ transcript up:
http://ten.com.au/media/MEET_THE_PRESS_Transcript_Roxon_Gavrielatos_June_24.pdf
Greens policy encourages people to get on boats, it is an open slather policy!.
Abbots Nauru policy needs people to get on boats TO get there!.
Alp Malaysia policy deters people from getting on boats!.
Only a idiot would get on a boat knowing they will be sent to Malaysia to go behind
90,000 other applicants.
There would never be 800 sent to Malaysia after a couple of planeloads had been filmed
being sent there.
I think it is now self-evident. The Liberals and the Greens are pro-death-at-sea. It suits their political strategies to see vulnerable, desperate people coming to Australia by boat, or die making the attempt.
If they want to stop the deaths, they should pass the Government’s bill. If they refuse to pass it, then we can only conclude they are profiting from this evil traffic as much as the people-smugglers also derive their profits.
It might be useful to see what irregular entry of migrants looks like in a place where “boats” are not the key issue — the United States:
Dangerous journey: Migration through the transit country Mexico
[The migration stream going through Mexico and heading toward the US constitutes the largest in the world. Mexico is a transit as well as target country for migrants from Central America, in addition to itself being a source country of emigrants. Networks of “coyotes,” i.e., people smugglers, were already in operation before Mexican President Felipe Calderón declared the war on drugs and organized crime in 2006. It is also commonplace for migrants to be blackmailed, robbed, and physically attacked by corrupt police and migration officials. In the meantime, the violence has proliferated even more with kidnappings, torture, and murders committed by armed criminal gangs. Many of these atrocities are carried out in collaboration with the local authorities.]
Yet still they come …
[Mexico’s Secretariat of Governance (SEGOB) estimates that approximately 150,000 people cross the southern border into Mexico without papers every year, while civil society organizations estimate that number at 400,000. The majority come from Central America, in particular from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Moreover, between 2005 and 2010 over one million Mexicans emigrated, 90 percent of them to the US. ]
[Since the ascension to office of Felipe Calderón, an estimated 100,000 Central American and Mexican migrants have disappeared in Mexico. These migrants are systematically kidnapped and blackmailed by criminal gangs, often in collaboration with Mexican government officials. Their status as “undocumented migrants” makes them particularly vulnerable. Mexico’s national migration office, the Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM), has had to fire approximately 350 officials – nearly 15 percent of its personnel – since 2007 due to suspected connections with organized crime and other offences, such as human trafficking.
According to Amnesty International, numerous refugees who were formerly in the hands of criminal gangs have reported that the gangs regularly smuggle large groups of more than 100 people at once. The gangs usually force their victims to work for them or to give them contact information on relatives in Central America or the United States, from whom the gangs then demand ransom. Migrants who fail to cooperate or for whom the ransom has not been paid on time are tortured or killed. Indeed, mass graves with corpses of migrants have been discovered fairly frequently of late in Mexico. There is at present no reliable count of the total number of victims; however, the Mexican NGO Sin Fronteras estimates that over the last 10 years at least 60,000 Salvadorians have disappeared who had been in contact with their family for the last time on Mexican soil.]
And still they come …
[Approximately 25 percent of those who transit through Mexico are women. They generally try to select routes that are more clandestine than those taken by men. The freight trains (known as La Bestia), for example, are a more preferred option for men, whereas women usually try to get false papers from a ‘coyote’ and use overland buses or trucks. An estimated 65 percent of migrants pay a ‘coyote’ to get to the US through Mexico.
In addition to the risk of being robbed, kidnapped, and blackmailed, women are continually in danger of becoming a victim of rape or forced prostitution. Most of them are aware of this danger when they embark on their journey to the US. However, as the poverty in their homeland is so severe, they see no other choice.]
So still they come …
[Once the migrants have made it to the north of Mexico, they face yet another obstacle: passing the border into the US. In the mid-1990s, the Clinton administration ordered the building of border fences along the main border crossings Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez and federal officials were assigned to ensure a tighter border control. These measures have been continued by the governments of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In response thereto, the costs of a ‘coyote’ have risen from roughly 700 USD in the late 1980’s to nearly 2,000 USD ten years later, a trend likely to persist, according to a study by the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego. In addition, the main illegal border crossings for Mexican migrants have had to be relocated to the more dangerous desert regions near Sonora on the Mexican side and Arizona on the US side, where countless lives have been lost.
Most Central Americans opt for the shortest path through Mexico and transit the US border at an illegal crossing leading to Texas, which is also where most of the cocaine is smuggled to the US. That area is controlled by the Gulf Cartel. While exact figures are unavailable, many migrants are forced to smuggle drugs in exchange for being allowed to use the cartel’s routes. At the border city Ciudad Juárez – currently fought over by the Juárez Cartel, the Gulf Cartel cooperating with the Pacific Cartel, and Los Zetas – the pressure on migrants to smuggle drugs for the different cartels is particularly strong. ]
Howardesque response: Clearly, what the US has to do is to stop rolling out the welcome mat and get serious about deterrence. But how can they make the calculus worse?
Wanna bet that anything will change in Canberra this week re AS. Some fine words from some fine people like Washer,Moylan,Windsor? Nothing will change because the Senate Libs and Greens will say No. People will keep coming – and keep dying. Thanks to us – we get the pollies we deserve.
zoomster
Go read the post by Outsider at 264. That sums up my position pretty well. Again you mistake my position on responsibility being placed on the Greens and the general arguments about policy.
Maritime law is clear. The responsibility lies with the Captain and crew of the boats.
Then Indonesian law in regards to the safety of boats.
Then and only then what Australia does to discourage the numbers getting on unsafe boats.
Then our policy on immigration and refugees. How we treat them on and offshore.
How to break the Malaysian solution – send 800 souls on 6 to 8 boats for nix and tell them to come back to Indon from Malaysia if they end up there – many will have already done that hop,skip and jump.
Once the 800 limits is breached it is once again open slather – high ho and away we go.
There is an unholy alliance at work here now – the Liberals, the Greens and the criminals who traffic human cargoes. These three groups prosper from the current situation. They all in their own way profit from the misery of the dispossessed and the stateless. This is indisputable.
1934pc
You are wrong. People get on boats encouraged because they see a life in a free democratic, compassionate, decent and wealthy country is possible for them.
No matter what policy the government takes on on or offshore processing that will not change.
[There you go using exploitation again. You want people not to drown. Put your money where your mouth is and lobby the government to fly them here.]
And what are the conditions for getting on the plane?
Do we just let everyone who wants to come? OR do we have conditions and qualifications?
If we have conditions there will always be those who don’t meet them, and who get on boats.
After all, this is what happens right now.
If it’s Greens policy to put anyone who can get to the airport on a plane bound for Australia, with visa, passport and fast-tracked citizenship, they’re even more whacked-out than I thought they were.
If it’s Greens policy to set guidelines and rule as to who gets on the plane, then it’s no different to what we have now.
Jesus, there are some idiotic people out there.
[There is an unholy alliance at work here now – the Liberals, the Greens and the criminals who traffic human cargoes.]
Abbott’s rhetoric about Labor being in bed with the Greens looks pretty hollow right now.
al palster,
Samantha Maiden seems to be pushing there will be some action in the Libs even including Turnbull and Ruddock in her tweets and articles.
The reality is that if Washer and whomever is behind him don’t make a stance this time, then they can be dismissed as grandstanding hoaxers.
[You are wrong. People get on boats encouraged because they see a life in a free democratic, compassionate, decent and wealthy country is possible for them.]
And why should those with tens of thousands of dollars that they pay to get them past the regular process get preferential treatment, other than that they can afford to pay?
BB
Why does no-one speak about the shonky application of the Migration Act at Nauru by the Howard government, which was outlawed by the HC on 11 November 2010. Their illegal application of the Migration Act allowed them to reject almost a third of the ASs.
Plaintiff M61/2010E v Commonwealth of Australia; Plaintiff M69 of 2010 v Commonwealth of Australia [2010] HCA 41 (11 November 2010)
The August 2011 Malaysia case is not the only case in which the HC has invalidated Nauru and Howard’s Nauru system.
Abbott the pug and sneery Morisson of course won’t come clean about the fact that their shonky assessment system previously used at Nauru is now a no-goer.
[Samantha Maiden seems to be pushing there will be some action in the Libs even including Turnbull and Ruddock in her tweets and articles.
The reality is that if Washer and whomever is behind him don’t make a stance this time, then they can be dismissed as grandstanding hoaxers.]
All the government needs is a couple of defectors in each House to get the policy through.
They may have to install a sunset clause in it, but so what? A year’s trial might be just the ticket.
@336 FB is comparing apples with Oranges. The politics of the US situation is completely different to the Australian situation. While some politicians talk tough – there are so many loop holes and so much incentive to actually overlook the issue within the communities that it is national joke – how many politicians have been outed employing aliens?
[Abbott the pug and sneery Morisson of course won’t come clean about the fact that their shonky assessment system previously used at Nauru is now a no-goer.]
They’re using the general nostalgia for the simplicity – as it turns out the illegal simplicity – of the Howard days to influence the asylum seekers debate today.
GG@345
That’s it in a nutshell.
Russell Broadbent is also like minded with Washer et al.
BB
That is not the point and you well know it. The point is talk about numbers getting on boats as much as you like. However do not attempt to use the deaths of people who have drowned to say your policy is better than anyone else’s.
That poster was doing exactly that. Right in the Howard mould. That was the point I was making.
No crocodile tears by people to try and stampede opinion.
As Fran pointed out we could go back to our real boundaries before Howard changed them. That would prevent drowning.
The truth is these people do not care about the people drowning they are just using it in an attempt to discredit the arguments of others they disagree with.
[@336 FB is comparing apples with Oranges….
[@336 FB is comparing apples with Oranges….]
Compact Crank, your drivel once is enough. Twice is insufferable.
Compact Crank,
That’s the Libs and Greens assertion. However, the Government’s assertion is that people won’t fork over the readies to make the perilous trip to Australia by boat if all it does is get you sent to Malaysia for processing.
The Pacific Solution is regarded as illegal under the HC juudgement frommlast year. The Government has offerred to incorporate Nauru in the current legislation.
So what is the downside for the Libs about allowing the Malaysian Solution.
It might work?
GG:
Moylan and I think Washer are retiring at the next election, which means they have absolutely nothing to lose for sticking to their principles above appeasing the monkey.
[That is not the point and you well know it. The point is talk about numbers getting on boats as much as you like. However do not attempt to use the deaths of people who have drowned to say your policy is better than anyone else’s.]
Are you seriously saying that hiundreds of deaths should inform the current debate?
What have you got to offer? Some namby-pamby worldwide solution to the refugee situation? Maybe we should all just be nice to each other?