Abbott wants to slide into govt on the back of more bribes to Nauru

Deja vu, we've seen it all before. A policy bankrupt party expecting to win electoral favour by ramping up its rhetoric on asylum seekers. Howard & Reith offered bribes to Pres Rene of Nauru to get the Pacific Solution up & running. Now, Abbott & Morrison are doing the same nasty two step shuffle.

I was ringside as the Howard fiasco played out. Public servants were threatened with career damaging outcomes if the Nauru 'program' went off the rails.

There should have been a full judicial inquiry into the governance and human rights abuses that underlay this strategy to ensure it could not happen again. I lobbied Senator Evans to this effect and got the standard she'll be right mate response from his department. Wrong, wrong, wrong.....Click here to read an account by a Doctor familiar with Nauru to appreciate one aspect of why the Pacific Solution was a disgrace.

Susan Metcalfe has written a book on the Pacific Solution that will be launched in Melbourne on 17 August. I encourage people with an interest in this benighted area of asylum seeker governance to read her book.