"Despite the legal and humanitarian shortcomings of Australia’s tough stance on asylum seekers, a recent poll by MUR Research shows 60 percent of Australians want the government to “increase the severity” of its treatment of asylum seekers as a means to combat the dangerous people smuggling business that in recent years has flourished in Indonesia."

Yes, because we should punish refugees seeking safety, not the people smugglers. Also quite disgusting that those 46 genuine refugees are still in detention without any legal recourse nor explanation for their negative security assessment.

In the last 6 months, I've learned how truly disgusting the majority of Australians are. How we ever elected such a spiteful self-promoting hypocritical man will always escape me.

The thing is, I don't know any Australians who think this way. All the Australians I know are kind, thoughtful people. Where are these assholes, and why are there so many of them?

Well, you tend to surround yourself with fairly well educated and informed individuals. There's plenty of people who for one reason or another aren't so interested or don't want to know more about the world.

It's one of the downsides of being in a fairly well off country - a lot of humanities plights like war, disease, corruption, torture and famine are very distant from our day to day life. It can be easy to forget they even exist.

I'm pretty embarrassed for Australia.