The Guardian explains Australia’s Cambodia option. (Click on the image for a bigger version)
Cambodia as dictatorship, violent crime and grinding poverty is the stuff of tourist cliches. And it’s highly unlikely that the cartoon is right when it says people will end up living in houses with dirt floors and no plumbing – in my time in Phnom Penh I’ve seen a steady upgrading of the housing stock, including in the slums. Which is not to deny that the “fact”-sheet being handed out to the refugees on Nauru is anything other than fantasy. Anyway, the first planeload is supposed to arrive Monday.
Philip J Coggan 