I hate the term 'asylum seeker'. In the 1970s, asylum seekers were smart-suited Soviet spies walking off planes at Heathrow and pampered Eastern bloc athletes and ballerinas going AWOL in America.

In our national dialogue, when did people fleeing war, famine and persecution morph from being refugees into asylum seekers? The very term cushions us from the misery of those escaping whatever despairing lives they left behind.
Last week's events on Ashmore Reef highlight once again that people will do anything, believe any promise, and spend any money, to get a better life. One can only feel compassion for the men, women and children we see on TV each night, sadly sitting lined up in dank rooms waiting to be 'processed'. God loves these people, even in their loneliness and despair.
The Government is facing a dilemma that their more compassionate approach to refugees, evidenced by abolishing aspects of the former government's policies, may increase the number of arrivals as people-smugglers take advantage of the changes.

Distancing itself from past wrongs, yet maintaining a strong policy of border protection, will prove a major test for Kevin Rudd, particularly in the face of an Opposition determined to make political capital from the misery of others, and public distaste for women and children behind razor wire.
This is one area of policy which requires a more global and bi-partisan approach than we are seeing at present. Australia under John Howard was part of the 'Coalition of the Willing' in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we must bear some of the consequences.

Globally, we must continue working with Muslim nations like Malaysia and Indonesia to ensure that they shoulder some responsibility for the trafficking of refugees and ultimately their re-settlement.