The debate over Canberra's handling of several thousand Afghan and other boat people from Indonesia claiming to be political refugees says a lot about Australia. Holding the refugees in barbed-wire desert camps or dumping them on remote Pacific Islands may have upset the rest of the world, but in Australia it was hugely popular.
The ruling conservative coalition has already won one election on this issue. It badly split the opposition Labor Party, which was forced by popular sentiment to support the government's move and to alienate its more progressive supporters in the process.
The progressives, rudely called the "Chardonnay set" by conservative critics, now find themselves back to where they started -- beating their heads against the rock of traditional Australian conservatism.