There is no evidence to show that the donations to the Liberal Party influenced any decision making by then-Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone or encouraged any of the politicians to contact her about the case. But the revelations raise questions about the appropriateness of political parties accepting certain donations.

Senator McCain lied first, in a Spanish-language ad that accused Senator Obama of helping to kill immigration reform last year, by voting for amendments that supposedly doomed a bipartisan bill. Mr. Obama’s retaliatory ad, also in Spanish, was just as fraudulent. The country needs to hear better answers, stated clearly and forthrightly.

Insisting he was not pushed, Senator Eliision said he had received assurances from new Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull as recently as this morning that he could continue in his current portfolio. But he said the demands posed by constant travel across the country and having a young family had prompted him to consider retirement.

That judicial statement of the obvious from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a ruling by the Board of Immigration Appeals, which said the Department of Homeland Security committed no big foul in using a site editable by anyone with a computer to decide the fate of a woman named Lamilem Badasa.

With the introduction of temporary protection visas, the Tampa incident and the excision of Australian territory from our migration zone, refugees were treated increasingly inhumanely. They were demonised by policies and practices that were largely - and shamefully - supported by both sides of parliament.

For Government ministers, the Opposition Leader, Brendan Nelson, is something of a political coconut shy at the moment. It’s always worth lobbing something at him: even if the odds are long, you might surprise yourself and win a prize.

The Rudd Government has acted in response to serious labour shortages in horticulture and the inability to fill these vacancies from the domestic market. Its decision to import temporary workers from the Pacific islands follows a three-year campaign by the National Farmers Federation and a five-year campaign by the South Pacific nations.

Less than a quarter of respondents (24%) in the Essential Research poll said the Howard Government’s policy on asylum seekers had been too tough, while 62% said it had been right or not tough enough.

The reform of detention testifies to the transformed political climate since 2001, with few boat arrivals in recent years. But Immigration Minister Chris Evans knows that more boats will come and this is Australia’s permanent challenge. In an interview with The Australian, he argued the new detention policy is geared to this reality.

The Howard government’s policy of mandatory detention had essentially stopped the flow of thousands of people illegally entering Australia from Indonesia, Philip Ruddock, a former immigration minister during the Howard years, said today.