Hi, I'm back

Hi!
Sorry I left you for a couple of weeks. I was away, you see. I was lucky enough to score a media junket to Jakarta and Bandung as part of a bid to promote the rest of Indonesia. You know, apart from that most cliched of holiday destinations, Bali.

It was an amazing trip and really opened my eyes to how lucky we are here in Australia.

I read a newspaper article while I was there about the president (SBY, who was recently re-elected) and his efforts at reducing poverty in the country. The article said that he had been relatively successful in reducing poverty because by the end of his first four years, he had reduced the amount of people living under the poverty line by 4 million.

Sounds fantastic, doesn't it? Except when put into the context of the total population living in poverty at the time. He reduced it from 36 million to 32 million. 32 million people living in poverty. And by poverty I do mean poverty.
That's about one and a half times the population of our entire country.

With this in mind, I have to say I can completely understand the reaction by an Indonesian district governor not to accept the Australian customs boat carrying refugees that were originally headed for Australia.
These guys have enough problems feeding and looking after their own people as it is. And we're a country with a relatively tiny population and a massive amount of land around us.

I've got to say I'm a bit disappointed that Mr Rudd seems to be trying to find his own Pacific Solution simply because the panic merchants are trying to tell us that we're getting swamped. He is a Labor Prime Minister and he has a responsibility to educate the public on some of the myths surrounding asylum seekers.
I'm sure he's probably a bit nervous considering Howard won an election on the back of the Children Overboard scandal, but he needs to take a stand. And not the sort of stand he's taking now.