SYDNEY -- The human agony of the Afghan refugee crisis has exploded in the middle of Australia's election campaign. Suddenly ethics are pushing aside vote-grabbing promises in the knife-edge runup to the Nov. 10 poll.
Even notoriously gabby Australian politicians were stopped in mid-sentence by last week's reports of 350 Middle Eastern refugees drowning off the Indonesian coast after being ordered out to sea on a leaky fishing boat by Indonesian police and people smugglers.
This latest horror among boat people desperately trying to reach Australia has sickened the electorate here already exasperated by daily television scenes of refugees locked up in Outback detention camps or being bundled off to remote South Pacific islands.