Sunflower,
Thank you for your concerns, however I am more than willing to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous advocates in my endeavor to expose rorts, and there are few rorts as big and as lucrative as the asylum seeker caper.

Firstly, you talk of “Humanitarian Program”. Someone notable once said: “A rose by any other name is still a rose” –that has dual relevance here!
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/somalia-jihad-drive-probed/story-e6frg6of-1111115033793

Secondly, you say we stopped receiving asylum seekers from Sri Lanka last April.
Two responses:
i) In view of what my linked report says , we should never had begun receiving them. It was purely a ploy to gain residency in an affluent western nation.
ii) You need to check your facts –though, I note your delicate choice of words “from Sri Lanka”, here’s a group that come to us much later ( via Indonesia!) “The Federal Government finally agreed to take them last year and seven arrived in Australia in December.” Then you did say "from Sri Lanka"!
http://www.news.com.au/national/ten-oceanic-viking-tamils-remain-stranded/story-e6frfkw0-1226009564065

Thirdly, you say that because such rorts happen in Canada does not mean they also happen in OZ –sound logic -- poor understand of human nature .Australia has rorts of its own

Cheers, Sunflower/Briar

Good morning Ludwig,
Three quick responses.
One. Your opening question is exactly the nub: “How could asylum seekers be treated more humanely, without detention and with shorter processing times, without spurring a big increase in the rate of arrivals ..?”
Having a lot of respect for Chris Sidoti, we could ponder his proposals from some years ago now: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=1744&page=0
But we certainly need to make detention more humane. The damage being done to innocent people, including young children, is well-documented.
The other risk inherent in oppressive detention was referred to here yesterday in another article: “No law and order Renaissance for New South Wales.”
Although on another topic (prisons) it included a quote from US intelligence via WikiLeaks reporting on detention here in France: "It is often the shock of prison, detailed the RG report, that transforms petty criminals into Islamic extremists". (RG = Renseignement Generaux, France’s ASIO.)
Number two. “So we really do risk there being a major blow-out in the arrival rate if we further weaken the disincentives.” Yes, I agree, but not with the same level of anxiety as many Australians living in Australia.
This is because (a) we get vastly more asylum seekers here in France than you do, yet this has no impact whatsoever on anyone’s daily life. So how little is Australia’s puny trickle likely to impact anyone? (b) you will only ever get a trickle because your land is girt by a very large and dangerous sea. (c) you are the best-placed nation in the world to accept refugees and asylum seekers. I heard somewhere that your land abounds in nature's gifts of beauty rich and rare. And for those who come across the seas you have boundless plains to share. (d) Australia received many more Indochinese refugees in the 1970s/80s which you resettled happily enough.
Number three. “As much as I don’t want detention and processing to be part of the deterrence factor, it inescapably is, and we need to be very careful about that.” Absolutely, Ludwig. Agree entirely.
Cheers, AA

Alan, in response to Chris Sidoti’s article; of course there is a better way to deal with asylum seekers than mandatory and indefinite detention….IF we just entirely overlook the deterrence factor! Sidoti appears to have not even thought of this, or the fact that with the sort of asylum-seeker treatment that he is advocating, we would DEFINITELY have seen a big escalation in arrivals, and then a high rate in an ongoing manner, instead of the near-termination of onshore asylum seeking that we saw under Howard.

You wrote:

<< you will only ever get a trickle because your land is girt by a very large and dangerous sea >>

Not too sure about that. If Australia was seen to be a really soft touch, asylum seekers would head this way in great numbers

<< …you are the best-placed nation in the world to accept refugees and asylum seekers. I heard somewhere that your land abounds in nature's gifts of beauty rich and rare. And for those who come across the seas you have boundless plains to share. >>

Not so. Australia is predominantly of low and erratic rainfall and low soil fertility. I would strongly argue that we are close to a sustainable population and that we should NOT be entertaining a large immigration program.

We should boost the numbers of refugees that we bring in, from the current ~13 600 pa to perhaps 25 000. But this should be within an immigration program that is wound right back to net zero. This means that the refugees would be the major component of an annual immigration intake in the order of 30 000.

<< Australia received many more Indochinese refugees in the 1970s/80s which you resettled happily enough. >>

Yes, without too much friction. But that was through our formal immigration program.

I wrote:

< I would strongly argue that we are close to a sustainable population and that we should NOT be entertaining a large immigration program. >

Perhaps I should have said:

I would strongly argue that we have a population that is close to the upper limit of potential sustainability, but which certainly isn’t with a lifestyle and resource consumption rate anything like we now have, and that in conjunction with a much more renewable and less profligate approach to resource usage, we should be heading directly towards a stable population, for which by far the largest factor, and the easiest to address, is the large-scale reduction of immigration.

Hmmm, that’s mouthful of a sentence. But after you’ve read it 5 or so times, I think you should get my drift!! ( :>/