I'm very glad you spelled out that what the High Court actually did was notify the government that the current Migration Act legislation does not support its policies.

I'm sick of reading the claptrap about how the Court undermined executive powers, missed opportunities, engaged in activism and all the rest of the hysterical twaddle. All the Court did was to make it clear that a majority of 6-1 concluded that the legislation and the government's policy do not currently correspond, thereby giving the government the opportunity to make amendments to the Act.

Just the law doing its job, I would have thought.

How Gillard, a lawyer, failed to grasp that fundamental point, is beyond me. Personal petulance rules, I guess.

My reading of the decision of the court was that a major reason for knocking back the scheme was that the Malaysian government isn't a signatory to some international agreement concerning refugees. It would therefore seem that any changes to Australian legislation would do virtually nothing to change that, and a futher challenge which will inevitably come from the previous protagonists, will have the same result.

David

I though it was to do with the Immigration Minister's discretionary powers to determine if another country has the conditions in place that satisfy our requirements for the safety of asylum seekers. As it stands, the court can and has overruled the minister's declaration that Malaysia is suitable, not because they disapprove of the Malaysia solution, that's not their job, but because of the way in which the relevant clause was worded by the Howard government.

The proposed amendment would give the minister sole power to send asylum seekers to any country he determines suitable, it will be non country specific and presumably tightened up to prevent any of the legal challenges to the minister's decisions that are possible at the moment.

A ripper article. Though revisiting this issue, this article raises some points worthy of further consideration.

An initial point: In order to have a free hand, it appears Oz would have to withdraw from the Refugee Convention as well as amending our Immigration Act - both of which hamstring our options. Is the Refugee Convention outdated - given the massive escalation in the world refugee crisis? I think so, irrespective of whether you are pro- and anti- resettlement. Is this truly a crisis issue, and an opportunity demanding supportive attention by the U.N., the IMF and the World Bank? Absolutely! The alternative? Vortex!

From the article:
"Spending many years as a recognised refugee before being resettled is obviously terrible. There is a strong argument that for every asylum seeker that we accept another refugee must wait in limbo in a third country before, if ever, being resettled.", ".. how can we blame people for trying to circumvent a failing system?"

All too true, but:

"Nor is there a sound reason to ask them to accept a life that we ourselves would not accept."

This latter I refute. We are all aware that many millions of people are currently living a life we in Oz would certainly reject - in India, Tibet, Burma, Bangladesh, etc, etc, and even others in the middle east, the Balkans, South America - and on the list goes. Furthermore we are all aware that our Western lifestyle is not sustainable, even with millions continuing to live in deplorable poverty and hardship. So, can we offer our lifestyle to all? Impossible!

A clue from the article:
"Perhaps most crucially, people are fleeing because the people that they are fleeing from do not see any consequences for their actions.In that regard, a regional framework on war crimes might be just as useful as a regional framework for dealing with asylum seekers."

What should the international community do? Act, and act hard - to reel in the perpetrators, to reel in Western decadence, to obviate poverty, and to make equity and sustainability the supreme world mandate and compulsion.

The Malaysian "agreement" contained a clause stating that it was not legally binding, therefore there were in fact no "real" protections of Human Rights or otherwise.

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No, that carrot headed scrubber was just trying it on, as often politicians do, in the murky grey area of untested and undefined laws, where policy reigns at the expense of justice.

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JuLiar GeeLar should have been cited for making comments not consistent with "Good Guvernance" as the current envoy to the Church of the Rock Spider was post Wik and Mabo.

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It is fine to criticise if there is a basis to do so as far as I am concerned, but GeeLar was just talking sh!t in a vein attempt to garner populist support.
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If there was a reasonable basis for criticism, say as when *GreenBrowny* criticised the twits in the immigration department recently then that is fine by me, criticise away

(as in that particular instance there is no reasonable basis to think that on balance if we processed Asylum Seeker's on shore that it would lead to a situation like the recent riots South of Scotland.)

Thank you Dilan. The Labour governments irrational, confused scrambling to divert asylum seekers on boats (few though they are) anywhere but Australia and at any price and by any means is reprehensible. Using a pretext of blocking the people smuggling 'model' (whatever that is, Gillard) or 'stop the boats' (Abbot)its open season with for human rights abuse, the law and and one of its key principles - natural justice.