everyone is missing the point, there are two ways to defeat tyrants, one is an expensive war with great suffering, the other is to provide refuge for those wishing to flee. to deprive the tyrants of human labor to exploit will limit their power and influence. the drain on the communist bloc from defections forced huge resources to be devoted to stopping their citizens fleeing.
if we want to fight the evil in the world without picking up the sword, then we need to clean the stable.

First, let's clear up the arithmetic sleight of hand. If half of refugee applicants arrive here by boat, it is reasonable to conclude that all the others arrive by plane. (see Dr. K. Koser, below).

They obviously have money that water-borne refugees don't have, as well as documents good enough to get a tourist visa. They are just as much 'queue-jumpers' if not more so.

At present, a person in Indonesia granted refugee status is given papers to that effect and then can wait up to two years while Australian paper-shufflers do 'security checks' - a means of dissuading others to apply for refugee status in Aus.

In the meantime, they have no right to work or send their kids to school, and Indonesian police trawl the streets arresting refugees, confiscating their papers and putting them back in prison to start the whole process over again. That can go on for decades. ABC “Four Corners” documented this well.

Why Australia? Most of the countries between whence they are fleeing aren't UN Refugee signatories. Compared with other OECD nations, we take a modest amount. We are signatories, obliged to take some refugees. If we don't get our refugee quota via Indonesia, where else should we be insisting they come from?

It might be news that the Taliban don't ride into Hazari villages handing out travel documents and letting them leave with their money – they imprison and kill them, they dispossess them, and the 'boots on the ground' either can't or won't protect them.

Tamil teenage boys are kept in concentration camps for no reason than being Tamil youths, while we look away.

Vietnamese refugees were processed on-shore and within the community. it's cheaper than running prison camps either on-shore or elsewhere in the region (see below for data).

Dr. Khalid Koser, of the Lowy Institute, debunks a few myths about refugees in Australia that the shock-jocks like to put about:

http://lowyinstitute.org/Publication.asp?pid=1477 (PDF, 476kb).

Part 2 follows.

Part 2:

From Dr. Koser's paper:

In 2009, 222,000 people applied for refugess status in Sth. Africa.

From July 2009 to Jan 2010 inclusive, 110 boat arrivals were assessed not to be “in genuine fear of harm or persecution”, the UN definition of a refugee.

Consistently, 80% of airborne applicants for refugee status are rejected by Australia.

Afghan refugee nubers worldwide increased 45% from 2008 to 2009 (from 18,453 to 26,803). Wikileaks makes it obvious that no-one actually fighting that war thinks the West is winning, or that it will win.

Offshore processing is a cynical affectation (my opinion) – we are currently budgeting $160 million per year to discourage 6,000 people a year, the overwhelming majority of whom are entitled to refugee status in Australia.

Under Malcolm Fraser, we had compassionate treatment for refugees, and all of the miseries predicted by the radio ratbags and fear-mongering columnists have since proved to be lies.

Then came Pauline Hanson's 'politics of hatred'. The Labor government cravenly 'toughened up' refugee policy to claw back votes from Hanson by adopting some of her xenophobic policies.

Now we have a government too paranoid and spineless to give refugees a fair go, and an opposition that wants to earn its votes through the politics of hatred and fear.

<They obviously have money that water-borne refugees don't have, as well as documents good enough to get a tourist visa. They are just as much 'queue-jumpers' if not more so.>

Yes, but how many refugees are killed on the plane flight? There are three problems with the current refugee policy, and no amount of political spin can disguise them..

1) The current policy endangers the lives of refugees by encouraging them to take perilous voyages in order to increase their chance of gaining asylum.

2) By giving preference to refugees arriving by boat, the current policy does not treat the millions of refugees in the world with equality.

3) The current policy profits the criminal enterprise of human trafficking.

The UN refugee convention needs to be rewritten so as to enshrine the principles of protecting human life and treating equally deserving people with equality. If it also discourages criminal activity that would be a bonus. A better policy might also gain more support.

The current policy is a death sentence for many refugees.

Well said Fester,

Shadow Ministers statistic illuminates the problem. The sucess rate for asylum applications (with a ten year waiting period) is 9%. The success rate for boat people is 70% and their wait is usually more like 1 year.

With those kinds of numbers its easy to see why the boatpeople are taking the chance. Whats not clear is why the gov't (a labour gov't too) ignores the obvious social justice (and safety) implications of this misguided policy.

tafkao,

By all means argue for better conditions for refugees, lower waiting times, better temporary accomodation etc. But don't tell us that the people arriving on the boats are more deserving than those who aren't. The comparison with those arriving by plane without visa's is specious. In general those people aren't refugees at all. Until recently, the majority of people who received refugee visas got them through the correct channels via refugee camps.