Well said John. There are a couple of points I would add.

Many people forget that, for those in developing countries, getting permanant residence in Australia is like winning the Lottery. The incentive to migrate by hook or by crook is massive in financial terms, which is part of the reason why people take such risks to get here or to places like Western Europe.

There is also a multiplier effect in that many, who are given asylum, will subsequently seek to bring their wives and families to Australia, and (for some groups) future generations will seek to bring spouses from their home country.

Most Australians would be less concerned about unauthorised asylum seeker arrivals if their post-arrival outcomes were more satisfactory. Concerns relate to very high dependence on welfare and a belief that some groups are unlikely to integrate easily into the rest of society

Another young Tory staking his claim for a seat at the table. A greater collection of ill-informed nonsense it would be hard to find. Has this idiot the least notion of international law and the responsibilities that it entails? Clearly not. I am afraid that OLO is becoming less and less a forum for intelligent debate and more an echo chamber for the Liberal (there's a misnomer) right wing.

If Waleed Aly and his ilk find that Australia is such a uncivilized place, he remains completely free to return to his Egyptian homeland. The others can please themselves.

I've lived in tents and less. Our early settlers/pioneers lived in bark huts and tin sheds with dirt floors! Some even had running water! running in the stream a few hundred yards from the house.

These folk are entirely uninvited and if able to successfully usurp our Australian migration laws, effectively elbow much more deserving asylum seeker claimants out of the way! There are very limited places! And more displaced folk now, that after WW11! For mine, anyone able to front up with a year's salary to pay a trafficker for a visa free illegal transportation. Has he means to use normal legal means!

If you've got that sort of money and have made it, by air to a transition destination, you should hang onto your documentation!

You know, those papers that allowed you to fly in the first place to safer transit countries, and once there, apply for legitimate tourist visas.

It would be far cheaper! And safer! And having arrived here by air, immediately apply for sanctuary!

And given that less expensive alternative option, the people living on Nauru/Manus Island, do so by choice!

As much as living in a tent on Nauru is problematic, I'm sure it's no picnic for folks trying to flee the genocide in Syria! Or indeed that meted out to Christians living in muslim dominated areas of the Middle East?

We need a regional solution. Like the one that was, all too briefly on the table, which would see these folk go to Malaysia, where they would be free to work, attend school, live in reasonable rented accommodation, and put themselves and their proven bona fide identities on a list for resettlement, anywhere but here!

That sugar is well and truly off the tale, and without it, the people smuggler business model is thankfully, busted!
Rhrosty.

"Not so fast. As soon as Dutton’s order came into effect, the self-harming on Nauru stopped. Immediately."
What is the evidence for that? It seems unlikely considering we've recently heard reports of children self harming.

"Even a cynic shouldn’t doubt that most people in the Labor party had the best intentions at heart when they abandoned offshore processing."

Wrong. Most people in the Labor Party wish only to alter the makeup of Australia by importing odds and sods to do away with Anglo-Saxon ethics. Their intentions are of the worst kind.

"I am afraid that OLO is becoming less and less a forum for intelligent debate and more an echo chamber for the Liberal (there's a misnomer) right wing."

James O'Neill wants OLO wants OLO to be an "echo" chamber for the left wing, clearly not knowing that the Left is the cause of all our problems and is doomed to anhilation in the long run. The pendulum is swinging.

I am perhaps more cynical of our politicians than you are John, as I would suggest that while borders are a necessity, the Howard government in particular, largely ran a con on the Australian people. For one, the Howard government made a great show of stopping the boats but said nothing about the rapidly accelerating plane arrivals to over 200,000 net. At the same time, the Howard government gave use the baby bonus and played the ageing population ponzi-demographics card while Costello earned the title Profligate Pete from the IMF due to his wanton spending.

The Rudd government, made a great show of dismantling the existing solution while accelerating plane arrivals to over 300,000 net. Gillard and Abbott much the same boats rhetoric while saying nothing to stem the flow of plane arrivals to anything remotely sustainable.

It should be borne in mind that to my knowledge, our only progressive politician who gave Australia a brief period of independence did not want to see further population growth in Australia:
"I do not envisage any dramatic increase in our present population, and indeed I would not wish to see one. I expect vast improvements in our roads and railways, new childcare centres and health centres, better hospitals and schools and improved standards of public and private housing."

– Australian PM Gough Whitlam July 1974

As an aside, Whitlam set immigration to net 0 and unemployment dropped to below 5%. Fraser reinstated our grow and hope policies and this strategy was copied by subsequent governments (perhaps out of fear of what the growth-at-all-costs-lobby would do should we have a leader urging for rational debate on population).