What a kick in the teeth for Rudd.

No, instead of a safe choice like Steve Waugh or plastic surgeon Fiona Wood the Australian of the year is Patrick McGorry.

Here is a man who used his acceptance speech to bite the hand that hasn't fed the poorest amongst us by saying that detention centres were:

"Factories for producing mental illness and mental disorder''

Can't argue with that.

Maybe today we should take some time out from our pissed up back patting to realise that there isn't much to celebrate.

Australia is rated as one of the most economically, politically and socially stable countries in the world. Often the great powers of the East and West look to us in great admiration. During a global finical crisis or during war the world sees stability in Australia.

Medicare, the dole, public housing, a just judicial system the list goes on. But what does this have to do with being afraid?

Well in recent weeks I’ve watched so many of us squirm, wiggle and slip out of giving any meaningful response to the refugees sweating it out on a Tasmanian fishing boat off the Indonesian cost.

My question that I pose to all of you is, On what basis do you as a safe, happy and secure Australian, have the right to tell these helpless broken people that Australia is closed?

Is it so the supposed flood of refugees just behind them, just turn around and except the horrific fate facing them in their home countries?

Or maybe the idea of one day meeting one of these refugees in the supermarket might just bring you a little too close to the painful realities that exists outside this country’s cotton wool culture.

It doesn’t take bravery to close doors and forget, but it does take bravery to keep them open!

I think as damn lucky Australians we can afford a little heart!

Don’t you?

"We will decide who comes here and the circumstances in which they come"- John Howard, 2001.

So lucky us, we were safe. Our Prime-Minister had pushed the hard line on asylum seekers and the Asian hordes were temporarily held at bay. But lo and behold once our 'protections' were removed the influx of illegals has increased and now, sitting in a harbour in Indonesia is a veritable boatload of hunger-struck Tamils fleeing oppression and possible genocide in Sri Lanka. Seems simple enough.

But, to wade through the shitstorm and create a dialogue what I want is for anybody that supports a hardline immigration policy to stand up, write in and try and convince me why you're not a xenephobic redneck that is futhering debasing the already shattered memory of Australian dignity. Good Luck.

Further to yesterday’s 100 words, here is the ‘evidence’ provided by Kevin ‘Whitey’ Andrews for his stance on the drastic reduction of African migrants into Australia.

• Concerns about race-based gangs.
• Reports of altercations between Africans at nightclubs.
• Conflict and assaults between some African families.
• Reports of a developing trend of young African males drinking alcohol in parks at night.
• African community organisations arguing about who received favoured treatment.

The racism test is easy. If you can delete or replace the italicized words with the word ‘people’ or ‘people’s’ and find that the statements are still applicable in Australia, without intervention by the Minister, then the unedited version is racist. D’oh!

So now the hearts and minds of Sudanese migrants to Australia are forever blackened by the anecdotal evidence of our immigratrion minister, Mr Kevin 'Whitey' Andrews. Where is the evidence that these people "have trouble integrating into Australian society"? It must be as visible to the Minister as a pimple on his arse and yet he and his kind put out these bum reports day in day out.

And to add insult to injury, he then suggests we should welcome refugees from Iraq and Burma as if all 'humanitarian' migrants are in competition with each other. These electoral stunts are sickening. They trash the endeavours of displaced people to improve their lot and the tolerance and appreciation of most Australian citizens of their right to do so in one of the richest and most underpopulated countries in the world.