<< The numbers of asylum seekers arriving by boat is still very low >>

Yes Grayzie, with the key word being ‘still’.

The rate of arrivals has increased considerably recently. What do you think will happen if asylum seekers start being placed around the country in centres where they can leave for certain periods and move in mainstream society as is apparently going to be the case in Leonora?

It’ll achieve one thing; to send a powerful message across the world that Australia really is a soft touch and is actually getting softer. Then the number of boats will skyrocket!

This issue could so easily become twice, or ten or hundred times as big. Common sense suggests that it should be dealt with decisively sooner rather than later.

The more boats that arrive, the harder the resolve will become to stop them and the harsher will be the treatment of those caught in the middle. If action is taken now, the small number of arrivals can be dealt with in a very reasonable manner. If the whole caboodle blows out to a boat arriving every day, then those people are not going to be anywhere near as well accommodated, and the interpretation of refugee status is likely to be very much less in the favour of asylum seekers.

continued

<< Of course there is, it's just not as emotive a political weapon… >>

I’ve got to disagree. I don’t think that there is much of a push for an increased formal refugee intake at all. Those that are strongly in favour of letting boats arrive and of accommodating onshore asylum seekers for ever more, no matter how many, as Bob Brown and Sarah Hanson-Young appear to be, aren’t coming out and pushing for this, or at least nowhere near as strongly as they are denouncing Gillard’s and Abbott’s asylum seeker policies.

The general community is saying; ‘stop the boats’. They aren’t saying; ‘stop the boats and boost our formal refugee program instead’.

It is not the media biasing the story. It is a real and most unfortunate bias within the Greens and the general community.

A few years ago I could not have imagined that I’d be supporting both the government and the opposition and denouncing the Greens over any policy. Throughout the 30 years of my political awareness, including being a member and state candidate for the Greens, it has very much been the other way around. But there you go.

So how's life on the dark side, Ludwig?

It doesn't seem to have made you happier - you seem inordinately anxious about a few asylum seekers, if your frequent bleats on the issue here are anything to go by.

I guess that's the sort of thing that's left to focus on after you've sold out.

10 percent of asylum seekers arrive in leaky boats, the other 90 percent arrive by plane or legally chartered ships.

Yet we as a nation continue to create a sh^ts-storm over a measly 10% (of whom the overwhelming majority are assessed as genuine refugees).

Why?

Why is our attention being diverted to such a very small issue?

What are we missing while this furphy of a debate continues?

People are arriving daily, disembarking from planes in our major cities, over-staying visas and disappearing into our nation at many times the rate of boat-people who aren't even reaching our shores. Thanks to off-shore processing - for which we pay millions in taxes.

Something stinks, and it is not unwashed boat-people.

Ludwig,

Of course the general public aren't agitating for an increase for an increase in the formal refugee intake - would you really expect them to?
The Fraser government, I believe, decided to boost its formal intake of Vietnamese refugees as a tactic to stem the flow of those arriving by boat and this was successful, ie. we still took in the refugees, but were relieved of the hysteria surrounding boat arrivals. In other words, what went unnoticed by the general public doesn't seem to have hurt them.

Peter King
Quite right!
Andrew Bolts up to no good exposing the neat little scam your mates been running – Bolt was always such a spoilsport!

But wait a minute: In your haste to poo poo it, you didn’t really take it in did you--- let's look at it again:
So we have this guy who feels so threatened, frightened, traumatized by all those nasties in Afghanistan he runs all the way to OZ.

And when he gets to OZ he PROVES to our TOUGH assessors that all those threats, fears, traumas are clear and present and gets refugee status.

But, shortly after he secures his meal ticket in OZ , he thinks now I’m safe,I’ll go back and thumb my nose at those nasties. I’ll be safe just as long I say “Hey nasty guys, I’m here on VFR”
Yep, it must kinda work the same way holding garlic up to a vampire makes him powerless.
ROFL

Now we know why so many boat people get accepted as "refugees" –because the processors haven’t got a clue – its Eeni Meeni Mini Mo, stuff. And you know what,there are many more like your mate!