The Pure Poison Podcast is dead, long live Something Wonky. Dave and Jeremy’s new podcast is now online. A new name, a new format, but with plenty of the elements that made the Pure Poison Podcast a part of your weekly routine. Subscribe to Something Wonky via iTunes, or via RSS. Alternatively, you can download [...]

This is it, the very last Pure Poison open thread. I think that we’ve said everything that we wanted to about Pure Poison closing down already, but I’d like to take the opportunity once more to say thank you, Pure Poison was more than just Jeremy and I and we will miss all of your [...]

Bad news for those thinking about subscribing to The Australian, according to these remarks it published today: …just $1200 a person. When you think about it, this is probably the equivalent of a two to four-year subscription to a pay-walled media site. In fact, it would get you 2.9 years’ worth of The Australian’s complete [...]

Yesterday she was giggling over a mother murdered for a cheap meal. Today she’s cacking herself about asylum seekers in peril on the sea: It’s funny because they didn’t arrive here safely. I wonder how many more of these we’ll see before somebody has a word with the people photoshopping the iPad ads. (Via an [...]

As the media demand that politicians PUT ASIDE POLITICS and SAVE LIVES but are vague on the specifics of how exactly to do that, the parliament wrestles with legislation that will SAVE LIVES whilst simultaneously PUTTING LIVES IN DANGER and if only people on the other side to me would put politics aside for a minute and vote with my party then nobody would drown again. Why don’t the people who disagree with me on the specifics of which country to send them to so that they hopefully give up on coming here and instead try to survive in dangerous camps care about refugees AND THEIR PRECIOUS WOMEN AND CHILDREN as much as I do?

I WOULD NEVER SEND REFUGEES TO A COUNTRY THAT HAS NO REFUGEE PROTECTIONS except when I voted with the rest of the Howard government to do just that.

If you want more than the media’s fatuous “if only they’d put aside politics” politicking and repeated declarations that only offshore processing to avoid our obligations is a realistic option, you’ll have to look online. Such as at The Conversation, where Sharon Pickering describes Six Issues Missing From The Asylum Seeker Debate. (Don’t look for the contribution elsewhere by her namesake Larry – he’s telling gullible people on Facebook that they basically win Sale of the Century when they arrive.)

Among the points Sharon highlights that we’re missing:

• No one is talking about the UNHCR having such a small number of officers processing asylum claims in Indonesia. It is impossible for this tiny cohort to process any reasonable number of applications. According to the International Organisation for Migration, from January 1 to May 31 this year, 24 refugees were resettled from Indonesia to Australia. That’s from a pool of 5732 asylum seekers and refugees.
• No one is talking about the relationship of people smuggling (as an illicit activity) to the licit regulation of entry into Australia. Australia’s universal visa system deems entire groups “high-risk”. For example, those from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Sri Lanka are routinely denied visas that would enable them to arrive legitimately by air. These groups are not considered risky because they represent a significant security threat (for, say, terrorism or serious crime), but because they may engage Australia’s protection obligations. No one is talking about changing these risk profiles and visa issuing practices.

The Herald Sun champions psychopathic schadenfreude in its readers: The good news story really made her day Via LGWS

Quick question: has something happened to our government this week that we’ve missed here at Pure Poison? Talking of an action by the Australian government, a columnist at News Ltd writes of ““this farcical boat people regime”. When did that happen? Have they broken out of detention centres and seized Parliament? ELSEWHERE: The same columnist [...]

The Coalition sends out flyers to small businesses encouraging them to raise prices and blame it on the “carbon tax”:

A handy notification that this butcher is one to avoid

The Government responds, pointing out that lying to customers (even if Tony Abbott has told them to) could (as during the GST introduction by the Liberals) result in prosecution by the ACCC:

Jeremy (from Victoria) and Dave (from NSW) announce that they’re leaving Crikey at the end of the week. Suddenly the editors of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald both quit. Coincidence? We’d love to tell you, but we can’t. Yet. UPDATE: An old friend thinks they might be after him, instead.

Crikey‘s First Dog On The Moon elegantly highlights the hideous flaw in anti-”boat people” rhetoric:

I’m posting it to Reddit next.

Elsewhere, The Age publishes former Senator Amanda Vanstone comparing refugees who arrive on boats with ants chasing after our precious sugar.