Marilyn, just go sail into Indonesia, or Hong Kong, among many other countries, without a current visa, return air ticket, or a bank guarantee of same, & full documentation of your vessel, & find out about illegality.

You'll be out of there so quickly, & so much poorer, your head will still be spinning a week later.

Marilyn Shepherd,

So, the High Court determines the law of the land? And, we are so bound by our adoption of the Refugee Convention that our government cannot legislate to enable us to expel uninvited visitors?

Who is the ass here? (Or the donkey?)

Would you please stop and have a read of what is being written here.
It is so bigoted and racial that it is sickening.
Yes some of these dreaded boat people are probably not 100% refugees but they have made an incredibly tough journey to be here.
The only wrong they have done is to be used as a political football by politicians.
This is stirred up by the so-called investigative media, who are really acting on instructions from a press baron with an axe to grind.
The numbers that come in are so small that they could have no effect on the population here.
The numbers that are deliberately brought in by the government at the behest of big business is immense.
This is added to by the huge influx of “workers” on special visas.
If you subtracted the number of boat people from the hundreds of thousands of “legal” migrants they would pass unnoticed.
These are the people that won an election victory for Howard. They are not villains, criminals, or coming to take us over, just unfortunates.
Forget about them and get a life.

sarnian,

The idea is to stop the boats:- firstly to avert the possibility of deaths at sea on the way, secondly to secure orderly immigration, with preferrence being given to the most worthy refugees (those in real peril and/or who have been waiting longest for relocation), thirdly to smash the smuggling trade and to minimise the risk of 'unsuitable' imports (such as criminals posing as refugees), fourthly to save these poor 'refugees' the exorbitant cost of hopping a smuggler boat, and fifthly to avert long periods of detention and lengthy legal battles after which we are currently unable to send anyone anywhere; and finally to stop the cue-jumping (for it is 'means' rather than just 'need' which determines who is able to hop a boat).

The ultimate objective has to be to stem the flow by attending to the problems causing people to flee their home countries prematurely in the first place. We can't reverse history, but we must surely try our best to avert its continuation and repetition.

It's not a numbers game so much as a matter of principle; and of establishing a 'real' solution to the refugee problem, by treating causation rather than merely attending to the symptoms.

Sarnian,

We have 7 billion going on 9 or 10 billion people on a planet that could sustainably support perhaps 1 to 2 billion in modest comfort.

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/ecological_footprint_atlas_2010

Most of these people have rotten lives. This is not our fault, and there is nothing that we can do about it. As plerdsus has said many times, we could take in 80 million of them and turn our whole country into a stinking slum, and it would only amount to one year's global population growth.

It is true that the real population issue in Australia now relates to the legal immigration program, that asylum seeker numbers are relatively small, but why do you think it will stay that way? Asylum seeking started small and genuine in Europe as well. Numbers snowballed over the 1980s and 1990s, and became dominated by economic migrants. Between 1997 and 2004 there were half a million asylum claims in the UK, not counting dependants who arrived later. 23% were found to be genuine, including after appeal, and a further 14% were given leave to remain. 76% of the failed asylum seekers (all the rest) were not deported.

http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefingPaper/document/108

The UNHCR has admitted that by the early 1990s, the vast majority of asylum seekers in Western countries were economic migrants

http://www.aph.gov.au/library/Pubs/cib/1999-2000/2000cib13.htm

There is no reason why we could not withdraw from the Refugee Convention and take, say, 20,000 refugees a year - from the camps and giving preference to the people who actually stuck their necks out to fix their country's problems. Sev Ozdowski's solutions are unworkable.

A convention is just that; or if you will, a gentleman's agreement rather than inflexible law? We can and should throw out those that no longer serve our interest?
How much does it cost to inter a detainee? As much as $50-70,000 per person per annum. Take a family of four interred on Nauru for five years; and, well you do the maths, then add in the almost inevitable legal fees, someone somewhere has to find; as rejects exhaust all their legal options; and or stalling tactics, which could easily double the cost of incarceration inc.
It's not that I blame them; given, in their shoes, I'd likely be following the same path; and indeed, sharing the trauma around, with the entirely innocent kids in particular, who are not likely to understand; either their incarceration or the subsequent family split up; as we try to "manage" an intractable problem. Only ever likely to grow even more intractable; but, particularly if we give sanctuary to people who hate us, western values, and our largely Christian belief system?
We clearly don't need to import the problems these people are allegedly escaping from?
My first instinct would to offer them around half the combined probable cost of processing and keeping them; for immediate voluntary repatriation to their homeland; or, another country of their choice, which would welcome them and their religious disposition; or indeed; their new-found affluence; a once only, never ever to be repeated offer!