MS,

The numbers drowning are not just those confirmed, but also includes boats that left Indonesia and never arrived anywhere. Look it up the numbers are between 500 and 1000 since 2008.

As for your contiguous zone, There is a 20 Nm contiguous zone of territorial water, in which people will be considered to be subject to Australian law, there is a further 20Nm contiguous zone which is not territorial waters, but in which the navy can intercept law breakers, but they are not considered to be in Australia. Beyond this boats cannot be boarded or interfered with UNLESS there is strong evidence that the boat is headed directly for one's territory.

This last clause was used when the Israelis intercepted the Turkish boat headed for Gaza.

As for the UNHCR charter, perhaps you should actually read it. If you do, then you will find that everything Howard did complied with the letter of the charter if not your interpretation.

For example, you cannot detain someone that has been determined to be a refugee, but you can detain them pending determination of status.

Shadow, 350 people are missing on a New Guinea ferry today, all believed to be drowned. Should we demand now that New Guinea "stop the boats". The ridiculous notion that we can stop anyone from being on the water has to stop. It is not our right.

LEGO, the $100,000 per refugee mostly goes to the British prison company SERCO, the lawyers work free.

That has been known for years.

Not only do SERCO get most of the money they make profits they then send to the boss in Britain to bolster his billions.

The lawyers here get nothing unless they are prepared to work for the government against refugees.

Enough. The cost is imposed on us by the government and no-one else - the proof is in the fact that each asylum seeker who flies here costs the community about $2500 each because we don't jail and abuse them.

MS,

After the elections in 2007 there were 4 asylum seekers in detention. Thus only a tiny fraction of the suffering and cost that Labor is responsible for.

I really have trouble believing that lawyers work for nothing, MS.

And if most of the $100,000 per illegal immigrant goes to SERCO, then I consider that a plus. Because if we didn't lock these people up, instead of arriving in old fishing boats, they would be chartering the QE2.

Could I ask you something, Maralyn? Why is it that you hate your own people so much that you want to turn your own country into another third world cesspit, full of third world people? The importation of Vietnamese "refugees" into Australia has resulted in a heroin plague which is killing 1000 Australians every year. And the importation of Lebanese and Arabs 'refugees" has seen 70 Australian girls gang raped, and entire suburbs turned into bullet spattered ethnic ghettoes with high rates of serious criminal behaviour and welfare dependency.

Yet you want to bring more people like that here? Haven't you caused enough damage to your own society already?

You know, Maralyn, I was born into very serious poverty. My father was killed in an industrial accident, my mother was unmarried, and she led a heroic life just keeping the two of us fed. When I was 9, my mother and I used to sleep in the same single bed in a room rented from pensioners. We waited six years for a Housing Commission flat, and we moved in with a folding card table, a TV, and an ironiong board. We slept upon the concrete floor.

Then we found out that out immediate neighbours, who were migrants, had waited only two years for their flat. I will never forget the shock of that discovery on my mother. She said that "the government thinks more of foreigners than their own people."

And that is the charge I level at you, Maralyn. I just do not know why you prefer foreigners to your own. Please consider me your implacable enemy who opposes everything you stand for.

LEGO, you make a very compelling argument, but I have to admit, after viewing the SBS documentary on the fellow who jumped at the Woomera detention centre, I am having a real problem balancing reason with emotion. The world is such a stuffed-up place in many parts, and I know we can't solve it all with the stroke of a pen, or with aid or intervention, yet I feel strongly for these boat people - even though I can't help thinking many could be classed as 'economic' or queue jumpers.

I am also extremely annoyed that it took so long for the SBS piece to be put together, or to be put to air. Why a delay of so many years to bring this predicament to public notice? Not just the case of the guy who jumped, but the stories of all those other poor lot? Cover-up? Shame! Disgusting shame!

The previous documentary 'Back to where you came from' (or such) was also compelling on the human side, but this recent doco was enormously more compelling on a humanitarian side. We just can't continue doing this sort of thing to people, any people, whoever they may be and wherever they may have come from. It is a dilemma, with absolutely no easy solution.

I was previously dead against opening the flood gates. I am having to rethink my position, delving for a humanitarian and economically feasible resolution - as the attendant problems are not going away any time soon.

So, until a way can be found to resolve these overseas problems I am moving to a view of meeting some of our supposed labour shortage, and Julia's aspirations for bolstering manufacturing and industry, by finding suitable work for our boat arrivals, and if necessary going into budget deficit to make it happen. We are multicultural, there are problems (as Lego has mentioned), but a humanitarian solution must be found - with no mums, kids or families in detention, and only refusing criminals.

Question: How can someone/thing be labelled unlawful, yet is breaking no law? Counterintuitive or contradictory?

Hi Saltpetre, you seem like a nice person with humanitarian ideals, exactly the sort who's values and attitudes can be manipulated by the self serving film producers at SBS. The media has the power to alter the values, attitudes and behaviours of entire nations, a fact that nations, (both democratic and totalitarian) are fully aware of.

It can sell products, set fashions, promote ideas, champion causes, create heroes, create villians, generate approval, incite rebellions, provoke wars, sponsor charities, win elections and arouse emotions.

It is a pity that you missed a news article, some years ago, about a young Australian single mother with two sick kids who was living in a car next to a park in Sydney, because she had nowhere else to live. (one of her children has since died.) Yet the Australian government has no trouble renting entire motels and filling them up with illegal immigrants, and buying dozens of suburban houses in St Mary's and filling them up with black African families.

THAT is the sort of thing which plays on my emotions, Saltpetre. It engenders enormous sympathy from me for her plight because I can relate directly to her and her children. While at the same time it engenders total hatred of an uncaring government which puts the welfare of foreigners above that of its own people. And it engenders loathing in me for these foreigners, who barge into my country, push deserving poor Australians to the rear, and who loot our social security system to who's upkeep they have never donated a penny.

Especially when these foreigners repay the Australian people with behaviour which is clearly unacceptable.

Sorry mate. In my emotional responses, in Australia, the welfare of Australians comes first. Perhaps you think that is hard, but I learned the hard way why this must be so.