Good article Stephen. Welcome to OLO.

<<Again I ask you, at what point does the contribution of boat people become an issue? Whether we agree on 4,000 or 10,000, be it within years or decades, it is simply a matter of time before our threshold will be breached.>>

The ‘threshold’ has got very little to do with actual numbers as a proportion of our total refugee or immigration intake and everything to do with the effects that asylum-seeking / people-smuggling is having on people who embark on the journey, on Australian citizens and on the conflict it is causing within our political and social fabric.

The threshold has well and truly been reached.

<<The notion of seeking asylum in Australia by boat must be rendered an impossible one.>>

Yes. Absolutely!

But your assertion seems to be at odds with your notion that we have not yet reached a threshold.

Your argument for turning the boats around is strong. But I’m reluctant to go quite that far, at least not just suddenly without warning.

continued

I think that any boats currently on the way need to be accommodated.

The people on them, and indeed those currently in detention centres needs to be subjected to a considerably more rigorous interpretation of refugee determination, that is at least some distance closer to how we judge refugees to be brought to this country via our formal offshore program.

The message needs to be sent unequivocally around the world that Rudd’s window of opportunity for onshore asylum-seeking in Australia is closing forthwith, and that anyone embarking from this point on will not be accommodated and will be returned quickly, unless there is a real likelihood of them facing tragedy if that happens.

Border-protection policy has certainly got to be tightened right up. Inevitably, some people are going to get caught in the middle. We need to be very careful about striking the horribly difficult balance between asserting a very strong deterrence factor while upholding our humanity to desperate people, as best we can. This means that we should certainly not just turn all boats back from this point on.

And then we should double our refugee intake via our onshore program.

Dammit. Stuffed it up in the last sentence.

It should read:

And then we should double our refugee intake via our OFFSHORE program.

The opposition Immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, was on Radio National this morning, spruiking the opposition's policy of turning boats around "where the circumstances allow".

Challenged to state what those circumstances might be, he listed three prerequisites:

1) the boat must be seaworthy;

2) you must have the support of the country from which they have come (not their home country but the country where boat sailed from);

3) you must have a guarantee that that country will not send them back to the country they claim to be fleeing from.

It seems to me that these prerequisites would hardly ever be fulfilled, given that:

(a) assessing seaworthiness is fraught with practical difficulties in the middle of the ocean, and fraught with humanitarian implications - if they get it wrong, people may die. It's a responsibility RAN sailors should not be asked to shoulder;

(b) Most boats sail from Indonesia, and we can judge the level of their "support" for returning boats from the disastrous results of the Oceanic Viking episode;

(c) Morrison says the Liberals are "committed" to "international and regional cooperation", but really, Indonesia agreeing to Australian conditions about precisely what they will and won't do with asylum seekers on their territory is about as likely as Australia allowing Indonesia to dictate to us.

So effectively, the circumstances Morrison spruiked would hardly ever, and possibly never, apply.

Unfortunately the interviewer Alison Carabine didn't pick him up on this, and he got away with what seems like a deliberate electorally-targeted slice of disingenuousness.

How does Stephen Austin propose to "humane(ly) turn 2000 boat people back now"? What circumstances does HE think would allow boats to be turned back humanely?

Well it seems that Ms Hanson/Gillard now shows her complete hypocrisy by agreeing with Mr Abbot that we should decide who comes here. Next she will be giving a licence for gw sceptics to be allowed express an opinion on the great hoax. Only the 'true believers would not be embarassed by Labours complete hypocrisy.

I think that this article is a disingenuous bleat, but it'll undoubtedly prove to be quite mild when compared with what we're likely to hear shortly in response to PM Gillard's overture to the closet Hansonites.

I'm always bemused by claims that asylum seekers who arrive by boat are unfairly taking the places of others in offshore refugees camps, due to the cap/quota of 13,750. There is absolutely nothing preventing the Australian government increasing its quota by the number of boat arrivals. Hell, we could easily quadruple our refugee intake while reducing net immigration simply by axing the bogus 'skilled' migration program.

But Dr Austin isn't arguing for any increase at all in refugee intake, which leads me to think his concern for the welfare of refugees is about as sincere as those other disingenuous types who deploy the bogus 'queue-jumoer' argument.