freebo

Now that the political drama has largely blown over was it appropriate to spend $300-500k (depending on who's figures you use) for taxpayer money to fly the relatives over for the funeral?

iamthecreaturefromuranus

Interesting one. My first reaction was "why are they being buried in Sydney?"

Difficult to argue against paying the costs on compassionate grounds.
Difficult to justify spending a packet of cash on illegal immigrants.
In otherwords... I dunno.

paulry

Apparently they have relatives in Sydney who can tend the grave and they reckoned that if they're allowed to stay then Sydney is where they'll head to.

The government could have lent the illegal migrants the money.

elice_in_oz

Government spent around $40m on a failed-from-the-start World Cup bid. There are countless other occasions where money has been wasted on things that make my blood boil. What's $500k compared to that? They might be illegal immigrants/asylum seekers, but they are still human beings.

Amazulu

No. They should have been buried on Christmas Island.

Does the government fly the relatives of soldiers killed in Afghanistan to their funerals? It would be interesting to find out.

elice_in_oz

I'm guessing they do.

Deancm_MKII

The bodies should have been sent back to their country of origin. Technically, they shouldn't have been in Australia in the first place.

Kim67

The last soldier killed was flown to Darwin before being flown to Tasmania for his funeral I think so that his mates could farewell him first. And like elice, I'm guessing they fly immediate family members to the funeral.

As for the Christmas Island funerals, I don't see why they couldn't have buried them on Christmas Island, but don't think it's unreasonable to have flown the families to Sydney as they probably would have ended up being relocated to the mainland at some stage anyway.

Deancm_MKII

No they don't.

paulry

Quite right but they seem pretty confident that they'll be granted PR

Poitin

If they were Islamic they should have been buried within 24 hours - that what usually happens.

Were they not Islamic then? Just curious................

Deancm_MKII

So confident that they boarded a boat organised by people smugglers...

Amazulu

And a lot of them have relatives in Australia - what a coincidence.

iamthecreaturefromuranus

who arrived by boat perhaps?

stevenglish

Not a good advert for harmony day is it? Those peoples lives were worth no more or no less than yours or mine, the total lack of respect for that, publically by pollys too, astounds me to be honest.