Like all decisions made on the run, there is nothing pretty about Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's attempts to head off the current stream of asylum seekers headed for Australian shores. To limit the number of boats arriving at Ashmore Reef or Christmas Island, the Australian Government has prevailed on Indonesian authorities to intercept a boat and turn it back to west Java, arranged for a party of Tamils picked up by an Australian Customs vessel to be sent to an Australian-built detention centre near Singapore, and offered financial incentives for Indonesia to intercept and house asylum-seekers en route to Australia. Mr Rudd says such actions are necessary to ensure an orderly migration program and to discourage people smuggling. They are, he says, ''tough but humane''.

Since many of the Tamils are fleeing the aftermath of civil war in Sri Lanka, and have valid fears of being persecuted by the country's Sinhalese majority if they remain, Mr Rudd's actions seem to be long on toughness and short on humanity. That, at least, is the view of many in Australia who believed that Mr Rudd would disavow the anti-humanitarian attitude to asylum-seekers adopted by the Howard government.

Labor might have dismantled the more offensive elements of the Coalition Government's so-called Pacific Solution, but in hastening to rebuff small groups of people with strong prima facie claims to refugee status the Federal Government has evoked the petty and mean-spirited attitudes of the past. Doubtless Mr Rudd still holds to his belief that ''compassion is not a dirty word it's time we rehabilitated compassion into the national political vocabulary of this great nation of ours''. For more, pick up a copy of today's Canberra Times