Australia's obligation as a developed nation

The celebrated statement of Rudd's today is: "I make absolutely no apology whatsoever for taking a hard line on illegal immigration to Australia."

It's the palatable message. Every poll since 1977 confirms that at least a third of Australians want every single boat person kept out, The Age in Melbourne reported.

Rudd is reasonable on the 7.30 Report. "(We have) an orderly migration program ... which deals with humanitarian considerations and our obligations under the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) ," he says.

"It's (about) having effective arrangements with so-called transit countries like Malaysia and Indonesia. Effective also (is) engagement with source countries, in this case Iraq, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka.

"It is the entire ... spectrum from source country, transit country, people on the high seas, as well as proper processing arrangements and dealing with asylum-seekers if they had established to have that status."

Immigration Minister Chris Evans puts the pressure on Australia in a global context. It's a global phenomenon, as desperate people flee war and persecution.

"The facts are that there has been a global spike in irregular people movement around the world," Evans writes in the online National Times.

"The UNHCR 2008 Global Trends Report released last month stated there were 42 million people forcibly displaced worldwide, driven from their homelands by insecurity, persecution and conflict."

Of that, arrivals in Australia are minuscule, says human rights specialist Professor James Hathaway, dean of law at the University of Melbourne.

"Even with those resettled affirmatively from overseas, Australia receives only about one-tenth of 1 per cent of the world's refugees," Hathaway tells the New Sunday Times. That in a country proud that, on the findings of the UN Human Development Report 2009, has the second-best quality of life out of 182 countries surveyed.

Why would Rudd not stake his legacy on taking Australia beyond the tired argument and counter-argument of border security - of all descriptions; military, strategic, economic and environmental? He has political capital in stacks, his government commanding a primary vote in the order of 47 per cent, to the opposition's 32 per cent.

In two-party-preferred terms, this translates to 58 per cent for Labor to 42 per cent for Turnbull's coalition.