Guess you don't do irony, Shadow Minister.

Still you refuse to explain why you want to retain laws that invite asylum seekers to risk their lives on boats.

It's not a complicated question.

Withdrawing ourselves as a country of asylum would stop boat arrivals risking their lives -

You say over and over again that you want to put an end to asylum seekers risking death.

They'll still be risking death if you send them to Nauru. That won't reduce the risks at all.

So what is your problem with saving asylum seekers lives by not inviting them to make the dangerous trip in the first place?

If we invite them, we're responsible for their deaths, aren't we? According to your reasoning.

We can withdraw from the Convention anytime we choose. It's voluntary. Might be embarrassing but you tough types could deal with that. Howard made it clear that the Coalition thinks the UN is irrelevant anyway. Assisted by Downer, Ruddock, Reith, Abbott et al.

Jennifer, I suspect your argument for so-called refugees has as much to do with your leanings as with Australian law.

Thanks for the update on the Liberals intentions - a mind reader, no less.

But, you ignored the point that people fleeing their country for whatever reason are supposed to seek sanctuary in the first country they arrive in - not get planes, destroy visas and employ people smugglers to get to a country thousands of miles away.

Was that point to near the truth to suit your propaganda?

Your arguments are pretty silly, really.

http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/rp/2000-01/01rp05.htm

Sounds to me like the Federal Parliament, many nations and even
the UNHCR know full well that the UN Convention is out of date.

I think its a bit of a cheek of the UNHCR to suggest that even
though their Convention is full of loopholes, rather then change
it, we should take more economic migrants to solve it.

Perhaps its time that the UNHCR got their arse into gear and
updated their Convention.

Ibbit -

The only reason for sending asylum seekers to Nauru is to make it as difficult as possible for them to be assessed for refugee status, in the belief that this will discourage them from coming in the first place.

We are a country that invites asylum seekers. In reality, we want to make it as difficult as possible for them if they come by sea, even though our laws say this is a legal method of arrival, and even though our laws say they are entitled to the same refugee assessment processes as any other arrival.

Even though we do not intend to observe our own laws, we still want to keep those laws. Even though we do not intend to observe the UNHC Convention, which requires us to process asylum seekers as humanely and speedily as possible, we still want to remain signatories.

Why? Because we will look very, very, very bad in the world if we change either or both of those things.

Then we have the do-gooders like Shadow Minister, who want to save asylum seekers from dying on boats. These do gooders will not agree to change the laws that cause asylum seekers to die on boats in the first place. That would make us look very very very bad.

Instead, they will allow asylum seekers to continue to die on boats, send the survivors to Nauru where they will be indefinitely incarcerated, maybe eventually given TPVs, and after many years of this abuse, perpetrated at unimaginable cost to the Australian taxpayer, they will be found to be genuine refugees and re settled in Australia.

This is OK with the do gooders because they figure all that suffering is bound to discourage the boat arrivals sooner or later, and the longer you make a refugee wait for asylum the better.

These do gooders are not entirely opposed to people dying on boats. They don't mind a bit of dying if it helps them achieve their goal of stopping the boats.

Somebody tell me I'm wrong. I'm all ears.

Jennifer,

/// Why? Because we will look very, very, very bad in the world if we change either or both of those things. ///

Not at all!

As you are so fond of pointing out, most of our near neighbours are NOT signatories –so why would it matter to them.

In fact, we must look pretty darn silly with some of the namby-pamby antics we get up to, to appease the “asylum seekers. Like when the “asylum seekers” hijacked our rescue ship the Oceanic Viking and gave us an ultimatum that they would not disembark till we guaranteed them a five star destination. And we were forced to provide B&B while our Prime Minster of the day shuffled around the globe begging favours like some minor feudal supplicant .

Our Asian neighbours (with the exception of Indonesia who was not happy at all to be roped into providing port facilities for the ship) must have been rolling in the aisles with laughter . Mind you, they were too polite to display it openly, but I’ll bet the story made for a few merry midnight karaoke sessions .

And as for Europe,whose member states are mostly all signatories-- and wish to god they weren’t!
At the moment they are too busy playing pass the parcel with their own illegal’s to worry about what we do :
“Greece they’re yours, as yours was their nation of entry”
“No France, we are a poor country , you have to take them from us”
I reckon the European nations are just waiting for an excuse to make a dash for the exits themselves.

Jennifer,

The single defining weakness of your argument is that the pacific solution not only complied to the convention, but reduced the boats to a trickle.

The bleeding heart refugee advocates try and delude them selves that the massive change in boat numbers that increased (by several orders of magnitude) had nothing to do with the relaxation of the immigration policy. For to do so would be to accept responsibility for the bodies floating in the water.

No one yet can provide an alternative answer for the massive increase in boat arrivals other than the new policy. And while "ebb and flow" might count for a 10% or 20% change, only the policy change explains a 5000% change.

Under the pacific solution, people did not die in the boats, simply because they did not come.