Ex Dame Pansi wrote on Jul 20^th, 2013 at 8:31am:


Pansi, it’s not compassionate to attract hundreds of people to their deaths with the offer of the decent wages, laws and shopping that is Australia. New Guinea offers asylum and safety. There is no death penalty there, but there is in most countries refugees arrive in.

It’s not humane to allow the constant flow of boats to Christmas Island to continue. Services there are stretched, the camps are full, and the navy are on a constant state of alert.

A boat goes down nearly every week, now, and the refugee numbers are escalating.

This is not the 2000s anymore with a few hundred boat people and a racist undercurrent to the policies. We’ve had 17000 this year, and rising. Boats are arriving each and every day now.

Human migration is not going anywhere. We’re in the middle of a refugee boom. Those that have come have stretched our existing services to capacity. There needs to be a limit on this.

Without that, it’s just more death and misery.

longweekend58 wrote on Jul 20^th, 2013 at 9:33am:


and on other issues?

Maqqa wrote on Jul 20^th, 2013 at 12:08pm:



And the ignorance continues   

People smugglers, as well and friends and family here in Australia (and elsewhere), have access to the 'net Maqqa.

Try to keep up.

rabbitoh07 wrote on Jul 20^th, 2013 at 9:36am:


What concentration camp? Asylum.seekers will be settled in the community. They get residency in a signatory country to the refugee convention.

This policy ends future mandatory detention. Yes, it discriminates against boat over plane arrivals, but mandatory detention has been doing that since the Hawke government.

This policy provides asylum seekers refuge and safety. That’s what the refugee convention is about. This is a more humane policy than the Pacific solution, as it doesn’t involve mandatory detention.

If you could let me know how this is in any way unfair, inhumane, or outside the spirit of the treaty, Rabbitoh, I’d love to find out.

There are 50 million refugees in the world today. Sure, we could possibly resettle all of them in developed countries with good jobs, clean water, health care and free education for their kids - if there was the political will to do so.

But what next? That figure will be back the next year and the next, and the number will keep growing.

Worse, we will be facing food shortages and environmental disasters in greater frequency as global warming takes hold and population growth keeps rising. There will be a greater demand for resettlement in the future.

This is why we need a workable refugee intake and a managable process. Every boat arrival we take in is another assessed refugee we refuse. Even if we quadrupled our intake (which I think we could comfortably do), it would still be a drop in the ocean.

The world is becoming more unequal, not less. Poverty is increasing, but infant mortality is decreasing in most places. We are now in the biggest population boom in human history. Communications are improving - satelite TV and the internet are pumping out an image of the developed world as streets lined with gold. Every time I go to a developing country, people discuss their intentions of coming to Australia, Canada or the US. I’ve had people ask for my email address on trains. A stranger in India gave me his resume and begged me to pass it around when I got home.

We’re smack bang in the middle of a very poor region, but Cambodians, Laotians and Indonesians are not getting on boats to Australia. If they did - and they are perfectly entitled to under the convention - we really would be swamped.

These are my reasons for changing track on this issue. When we were getting a few hundred boat people a year, STOP THE BOATS was essentially driven by racism. Now, with escalating numbers, it seems self-evident to me that there needs to be a cap on tbis - to stop the drownings alone.

My preference is for a higher refugee intake and a deterrent to boats. New Guinea does this, and provides refugees asylum in the community.

How can this possibly be a bad thing?

How can it possibly fail, Miketrees? Without the offer of settlement in Australia, who’s going to get on a boat?

Do you see any refugees paying ten grand and waiting months for a boat trip from Indonesia to New Guinea?

I’d be surprised if any more boats leave Indonesia from here on in. The next few days will be very interesting.

miketrees wrote on Jul 20^th, 2013 at 1:40pm:


It seems to have sucked Abbott in.

Correction, Abbott's now against it.

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/png-boats-deal-subcontracting-abbo...

It would seem he'd rather tow them back to Indonesia

MOTR wrote on Jul 20^th, 2013 at 2:19pm:


I don't think Credlin Abbott knows how to respond yet.  That 'subcontracting' comment was meaningless gibber.