While this doesn’t offer any solutions, and uses at least one unnecessary word, it offers an timely perspective on the refugee crisis that has gripped Australia since the Tampa incident in 2001.

I have an image in my head of an early settler in Australia complaining about about the heat and flies and an Aborigine saying to him, “Hey, love it or leave.”

Our culture was foisted without invitation the original Australians, and some may feel the same is happening to us now.  

Since humanity’s greatest enemy, Islamic State (ISIL, ISIS etc), started its murderous, genocidal rampage through the Middle East, the refugee crisis has boomed to the point where faraway Australia is in line to take thousands displaced from Syria. 

The photo of a Syrian boy drowned on a Turkish beach put a human face on the crisis, leading to calls to open the gates to refugees, and, counter-calls describing the flood of them as an “unarmed invasion” and claims that most of them are opportunists rather than genuine asylum seekers.

We’ve even had a certain dimwitted red-headed politician jumping up and down saying “I told you so,” and her misguided supporters unleashing an avalanche of dodgy dribble on social media.

Those who think there is an easy solution are mistaken.

People’s fears are at least partly justified. Every person who arrives means at least one job (or welfare payment) that won’t be going to someone already living here.

When Labor was in power, there would be reports of an asylum seeker boat arriving every day, and this simply couldn’t continue.

It was “stop the boats or lose the votes”.

However, Refugee Action Collective Eurobodalla are campaigning for our shire to become a refugee welcome zone, and in this they deserve our support.

The last word should go to NSW premier Mike Baird, possibly the best politician Australia has produced.

"We cannot see the images we have seen, and feel the things we have felt, and then go back to business as usual.”