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The Forum > Article Comments > Refugee boats: a plane distraction > Comments

Refugee boats: a plane distraction : Comments

By William Bourke, published 23/5/2012

The Stable Population Party would prefer to see all refugees arrive through an orderly United Nations system.

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<< Australia can continue to be compassionate AND resolve our population growth predicament with a balanced, flexible and sustainable migration program >>

Absolutely!

Excellent article William. Very good to see you on OLO.
Posted by Ludwig, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 9:10:16 AM
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"Boat people" and asylum seekers have consumed the immigration debate, but only actually constitute a tiny proportion of our immigration numbers. They are being used as a convenient smokescreen to hide the real source of non-citizens entering Australia - legal, "skilled" economic migration. Asylum seekers are used to give the public assurances that our borders are under control, but the reality is that our booming population is not from refugees but our silent, government-decided, economic immigration. With both mainstream political parties supporting high population growth, there is no democratic input, or open discussion. Numbers are decided in favour of big businesses and corporations, to supply a constant supply of new customers for housing, white-goods, land sales and home renovations. The costs of settlement are ignored, and the fall-outs in housing affordability, congestion, costs of living and environmental threats from demands on natural resources.
Posted by VivKay, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 9:15:00 AM
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The drama of new boat arrivals, tragedies at sea, detention centres, people smuggling etc all focus on asylum seekers. An orderly arrival of selected refugees from the refugee camps would take away the drama, the news-worthiness and the focus on these displaced people. While the immigration attention and debates safely stays on boat-people and asylum seekers, there's little attention to all the students, uncapped "temporary" workers applying for PR, skilled imports and family reunions - all happening under the radar.
Without our high economic immigration rate, and the drive for "big Australia", we could be a life-support "boat" for the Pacific Islanders likely to lose their lands to climate change. However, they aren't wealthy or skilled enough!
Posted by VivKay, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 9:21:05 AM
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Excellent article thanks William and likewise the posts from Ludwig and VivKay. We need to be compassionate towards people in need but also compassionate towards all the other species that inhabit this land, some of whom are being driven to extinction by loss of habitat, one of the many results of human population growth.
Posted by popnperish, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 9:38:59 AM
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Equating new babies born to Australians as equivalent to new 'migrants' is an irritating, illogical nonsense.

The whole premise of the 'Stable Population Party' is wrong. Their ideas prove the Malthusian concept of population growth persists and resurfaces every now and then and here they are back again. In the 70's it was ZPG and we were supposedly in a population crisis. Now we have many more people now with a higher standard of living than ever before.

Apparently the only thing we are not running out of is stupidity.
Posted by Atman, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 9:52:22 AM
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Well done, William. Boat people are 2% of immigration and 90% of the news about immigration.

The media and politicians avoid discussing quantities in assessing just about every part of public policy. Why let the facts cloud an emotional story? The carbon tax is 2% of overall federal tax revenue, is being offset by lowering other taxes, but Tony Abbott implies that it will ruin the economy and it is getting 90% of the news about tax policy.

If you went to a business meeting and said "This new 2% cost is going to kill this company and is more important than the other 98%," you would be laughed out of the room.

So much of the population debate doesn't want to talk about numbers either, but the people promoting high immigration know that they will make big numbers of dollars while the average punter pays for it with lower wages, less services, more pollution and more congestion.
Posted by ericc, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 10:17:29 AM
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William the issue of boat arrivals, and the potential for them increase catastrophically in the future if we weaken our resolve, is a legitimate concern of a great many Australians.

Until you and your party are prepared to take those concerns seriously, and quit dismissing them as unimportant, you and your party will not be taken seriously by the majority of voters.

Instead those voters will listen to Tony Abbott's duplicitous reteric about stopping the boats.
Posted by Boylesy, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 10:43:21 AM
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Granted boat arrivals are currently a tiny proportion of our current immigration intake.

But I think voters have a right to know what you and your party will do if that changes at some point in the future and boat arrivals become a much larger propoertion of our immigration intake.

And this is highly probable with the building global food crisis and peak oil.
Posted by Boylesy, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 10:50:22 AM
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"Apparently the only thing we are not running out of is stupidity."

Yes! Case in point you Atman!
Posted by Boylesy, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 10:56:52 AM
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2 percent looks rather petty doesn't it. That's what they thought in Europe in the 60's. What most people forget that just like everyone else they too have children & unlike everyone else they have more than everyone else
So, within a generation those 2% combined with continued arrivals look more like 25%. Still think it's funny ?
Well don't come bleating to use when you have to toe the line with increasingly fundamentalist authorities.
Posted by individual, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 11:09:01 AM
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Another valid point individual.

But it is not just confined to boat arrivals is it.

There are far greater numbers of legal arrivals at present who have higher average fertility than existing Australians.

But as I have pointed out there is no reason to believe that the current small number of boat arrivals will remain small if we drop our guard.
Posted by Boylesy, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 11:30:37 AM
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Boylesy and Individual get your calculators out. If Boat people doubles that will be 5000 more people and you will hear nothing else from the media and Tony Abbott.

If legal / business immigration increases by 10% you will never hear anything about it (except that the Business Council will say it isn't enough) that will be an increase of 15,000 people.
Posted by ericc, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 11:55:52 AM
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"Until you (Bourke) and your party are prepared to take those concerns seriously ... you and your party will not be taken seriously by the majority of voters"

Oh, that's good, belly laugh, I need to sit down...by the "majority of voters".

I'm losing track of how many anti-people partie there are. There are the SA anti-people under Frau Kanck and now there is another group from Victoria? Apparently they met earlier this year and didn't get on at all well. Maybe they both realised they had stolen the racist policies of the Australia First Party.

Isn't it curious that people with names such as Bourke (Irish), Liardelli (Italian) and Kanck (German) now want to stand on our northen shores and push the boats back with a big stick? I'm alright Jack!
Posted by Cheryl, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 12:11:04 PM
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Cheryl, a sustainable population is not about being "anti-people". On the contrary, it about surviving our success as a species. There's a cornucopia idea that the planet, where it comes to the human race, can defy the laws of Nature - ecology, agricultural science, environmental limits to growth - whereas other species can't. The worst scenario is ecological overshoot, something that many countries are already facing from environmental devastation, drought, food shortages, the energy crisis, climate change and loss of ocean fisheries. What is "anti-people" is the fantasy of limitless human growth, and ill-conceived notion that technology and science will continue to tweak agricultural production despite loss of phosphorus, soils, water and arable land. Population stability is about limiting economic immigration to keep our population as it is, rather than force growth onto us. Each nation should have a population strategy and be sustainable, not regard immigration as a chance to keep to the tribal cultures of big families. Our high economic immigration should be slashed, and then we could have a more compassionate response to the world's most needy dispossessed. Ultimately we need to have a policy on how may refugees we take in and who, but at the moment asylum seekers are being used as a smoke-screen to hide the real source of our growth - "skilled" migration and family reunions.
Posted by TonyB, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 12:55:54 PM
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Tony B, you seem like a sensible chap.

Look at King's story on Monday and the fact that we are exporting about $60 billion in food every year. Food we got, we've even got the energy to grow and harvest and distribute the food.

Have you ever wondered why we're having this chat? It has nothing to do with population and everything on how data is presented. In 2008 the ABS modified their stats to include overseas students as part of the population.

They then projected A,B and C trends until the year 2050. The newspapers grabbed on to the story that we might have 35M people in 40 years times. Shock horror.

We always knew we'd have 30M. Now imagine the error as international student numbers fall and population growth slows. We'll be lucky to hit 30M. But if we do, so what?
Posted by Cheryl, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 1:05:22 PM
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Hi Cheryl, since foreign students stay in Australia from 1-4 years or more, depending on the course of study they're undertaking, why should they be left out of the official immigration figures? Most if not all of the students then go on to claim permanent residency in this country and it is in fact a universally abused backdoor way of bypassing immigration controls.
Posted by Miles&Dizzy, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 2:34:11 PM
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I agree we need to ensure we also don't exceed our fragile environment's ability to support us. Australia is a big land; but, only the very narrow coastal strip is arguably permently habitable.
We might be able to support more than around 30 million people if or when we develop our vast and empty inland. And that will require reliable water supplies. A big but not entirely impossible ask in the driest inhabited continent on earth!
The people who arrive on boats pale into insignificance beside the numbers who arrive by plane and then outstay their visas. The people that flew hijacked planes into the twin towers arrived by plane, wore business suits, were clean shaven and affable, carried impeccable documentation, spoke excellent English etc/etc.
I don't believe family reunion ought to be a given right; but only available with citizenship and assimilation into the broader Australian community; rather than yet another ethnically based ghetto.
That means they need to accept us and our social mores; rather than seek shelter and then try every which way to change us into a virtual replica of what they were escaping from.
As for skilled migration, let's be certain it is temporary and adds to our skills base by incorporating mandatory apprenticeships/cadetships 2 to 1. In order to ensure that temporary remains temporary, two thirds of any after tax income earned, ought to be retained in a purpose created fund; and only made available when the worker has returned to their homeland, after a maximum period of 5-6 years?
This last requirement, would likely eliminate under payment or quite gross manipulation of temporary migrant workers; as just cheap labour! Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 2:57:10 PM
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Population growth at the rates we have been experiencing is making life worse for most Australians and it's unsustainable.It creates a more unequal, more stressed society and it erodes the natural environment that we all depend on. So it should be as small as possible.
We've grown by nearly 4 million over the last 12 years (from 19m to 22.9 million) — about the current population of Melbourne. We must slow down.
With balanced migration (and a total fertility rate of 1.9) we could stabilise at 26.2m in 2050.
The question of boat people is important but William Bourke is correct. It's a tiny part of our growth and Australia is one of only a handful of countries that accept refugees from camps overseas.
The UNHCR lists the top five for 2007:
The USA: 32,000
Australia: 6,000 +
Canada: 6,000 –
Sweden: 1800 -
Norway: 1000 –
http://www.unhcr.org/4034b6a34.html
We should focus on those who need our help most.
Posted by Jane Grey, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 3:21:35 PM
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What a load of old cobblers. We don't do our share for refugees. Resettlement of just 6,000 people and the grudging acceptance of a few thousand more asylum seekers out of the 43 million displaced people is nothing at all.

And stop claiming we have the highest resettlement next to Canada, resettlement is nothing to do with the rights of refugees to seek asylum under the convention and it has no legal underpinning at all.

It's a hoax that cretins pay $360 million a year for.

Because SIGNATORY nations are only responsible for people who apply in those nations, not for those who apply in other nations.

What we are doing here is effectively paying hundreds of millions to sanction actual queue jumping of refugees who have protection already in an attempt to appease ourselves.

Go to the DIAC website and read for yourselves if you don't believe that.
Posted by Marilyn Shepherd, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 4:31:08 PM
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This is from the UNHCR report into Australia

Third, the confusion, and often wilful conflation, of Australia’s commitment to offer asylum to those eligible under the 1951 Refugee Convention with a separate, and discretionary, programme of resettling 6,000 UNHCR-referred refugees from different part of the world each year.
This has led many to assume, wrongly, hat ‘proper’ refugees arrive through the resettlement programme and ‘improper’ refugees arrive by boat, with the latter accused of violating Australia’s borders and hospitality by jumping the (mythical) queue of more deserving people awaiting
resettlement. This false characterisation has led, in our view, to a disappointing loss of support for the institution of asylum at a time, during the Refugee Convention’s 60th anniversary year, when we are asking States to reaffirm the primacy of this important human rights instrument.
Posted by Marilyn Shepherd, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 4:31:59 PM
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You bet Marilyn,

There are some extraordinary figures being bandied about here.

"Like the poor white trash in the south after the defeat of the Confederacy in the American Civil War, the eco-fascists think of immigrants (and refugees) as freed black slaves – they consider them with envy and contempt.

Bourke's article is a thinly disguised attempt to curry favour with the Greens. Refugees are OK. Immigrants are not.

What he is really saying is that he wants to stop people having kids whether they live here or whether they arrive by boat, helicopter or aeroplane.
Posted by Cheryl, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 4:52:46 PM
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Marylin,
How much say do the indigenous get when it comes to letting more people unto their lands ?
Do they prefer refugees or legal immigrants or none ?
I have never got an answer to this question.
Posted by individual, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 5:47:48 PM
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Aborigines all over the country have been welcoming refugees to country since time began.

It was only aborigines who bucked the trend against our government not allowing Jews into this country and as many aborigines married
Afghan camel drivers in the 19th century they have a strong connection to the Afghan community and have taken them in as brothers and sisters since 2001.
Posted by Marilyn Shepherd, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 6:30:23 PM
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Marylin,
I meant nowadays. What's their view on more & more foreigners encroaching.
Posted by individual, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 7:34:51 PM
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what's their view of an upstart whitey telling them they can't have any kids 'cause we gotta save the environment'?
Posted by Cheryl, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 8:01:48 PM
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Err Boylesy, its best to examine the facts before you jump to conclusions. Obviously you mindlessly support the eco-sustainability driven model of the world, which as I said, is the latest iteration of the discredited Malthusian principle from the 18th Century. The world population has multiplied numerous times since then yet there is still more than enough food. In fact, in the past excess food has been dumped at sea.

The problem for both you and the author is that neither of you want additional people in this country, yet you wish to distance yourselves from Tony Abbott, who wants to stem the flow of boat people, just as you do. The squirming is interesting to watch. My question is how can you guys be 'compassionate' when you don't want babies or immigrants?
Posted by Atman, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 9:34:55 PM
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Nice article William.

We take only a small number of refugees - especially when you consider that those evil Iranians had two million Afghan refugees some years back (or are they still there?).

Or should we include in Australia's refugee numbers those NZ geniuses that flee discrimination from their hyper-intelligent former compatriots?

80,000 people in each year is still a decent number - 1/4 the population of Canberra. Makes you wonder what all the howling from the anti-"anti-pops" is about.
Posted by michael_in_adelaide, Wednesday, 23 May 2012 10:51:19 PM
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an upstart whitey telling them they can't have any kids 'cause we gotta save the environment'
Cheryl,
From evidence past & present do you think the indigenous would fare better under a fundamentalist regime ?
Anyhow, I was after an answer not another question.
Posted by individual, Thursday, 24 May 2012 4:43:12 AM
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@Marilyn

<<What we are doing here is effectively paying hundreds of millions to SANCTION actual queue jumping of refugees who have protection already in an attempt to appease ourselves.>>

Well said –at last we agree on something – as long as the meaning of “sanction” is taken to be :”Support or encouragement”

Our approach to the whole issue only encourages both illegal immigrants and their joint venture partners the people smugglers.
We don’t need elaborate expensive border controls. All we need is an assessment and review process which instead granting anyone who has no papers benefit of the doubt, only passes claimants who can prove their identity and their claim.
Posted by SPQR, Thursday, 24 May 2012 7:01:58 AM
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We have Atman telling us that "Malthus was wrong", even though the Irish Potato Famine and the Rwanda genocide are pretty good evidence that Malthus was right. There are abundant other examples of societies that collapsed because they overexploited their environment or failed to maintain adequate safety margins. See for example "Dirt: the Erosion of Civilizations" by Prof. David Montgomery (Soil Science, University of Washington). In Atman's mind, all these examples are cancelled out because Paul Ehrlich and some other scientists in the 1960s were unable to predict the success of the Green Revolution. Unlike the 1960s, we now face problems on a large numbet of fronts, not just poor agricultural productivity, and a technological solution to problem A may make problems B and C worse. Who should we believe? Atman, who says everything is rosy? Or scientists who publish in Nature?

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html

open version:

http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art32/

Cheryl? Or the German military analysts, who are warning about civilisational collapse in the medium term in the Bundeswehr report?

http://baobab2050.org/2011/09/04/bundeswehr-peak-oil-report-now-officially-translated-in-english/

Main points:

http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-06-13/review-bundeswehr-report-peak-oil-section-22-tipping-point-nov-2010

On the main topic, it is pretty clear that the government, with the encouragement of media outlets such as The Australian, has been pursuing a tough on boat people policy to make themselves look strong on border protection and deflect attention from the huge legal immigration intake. All the same, the example of Europe shows that the situation can snowball, so we need to be vigilant. Since we can't take all the refugees, I would prefer that we first take people who stuck their necks out to bring their country into the modern world, such as someone who set up a girl's school in Afghanistan, rather than on the basis of who can pay a people smuggler and tell a convincing (and uncheckable) story. The 1951 Refugee Convention isn't sacred.
Posted by Divergence, Thursday, 24 May 2012 10:46:12 AM
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"Like the poor white trash in the south after the defeat of the Confederacy in the American Civil War,
the eco-fascists think of immigrants (and refugees) as freed black slaves – they consider them with envy
and contempt."

"what's their view of an upstart whitey telling them"

"Isn't it curious that people with names such as Bourke (Irish), Liardelli (Italian) and Kanck (German)
now want to stand on our northen shores and push the boats back with a big stick? I'm alright Jack!"

Wow Cheryl!

You read rather like a racist with a large chip on her shoulder and who wishes to punish the 'whiteys' with heavy non-white immigration.

What, did you have a bad experience at school or something?

I encountered an Italian lady on QandA forum where this proved (by her own words) to be the case after a bit of probing.

If this is the case for you Cheryl then you need to rise above any emotional scars that you received during your school days. I am not without my own scars at the hands Greeks and Italian children, but you wont find me advocating increased Anglo-Saxon immigration in order to 'dilute'the influence of Greeks and Italians in Australian society!

And by the way Cheryl, you and Atman et el are rather fond of your strawman arguments about those who support immigration restraint and population stablistion aren't you.

Anti-children, anti-immigrant, facists and eugenecists.......LOL......I have two childen myself for starters.

Wait for it folks......the other favourite strawman argument will shortly follow after this comment about me having 2 children.
Posted by Boylesy, Thursday, 24 May 2012 10:49:38 AM
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Finally, a political party of sanity and reason ! Well done William for whar must have been an enormous effort to register the STABLE POPULATION PARTY .

Best regards,

Ralph ( Bennett )
Posted by Ralph Bennett, Thursday, 24 May 2012 11:44:15 AM
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It seems that every time a vessel carrying asylum seekers arrives on our door step the nation divides along lines of send ’em back, or open the doors to all. It is essentially a response to the symptoms and fails to examine the cause let alone develop a coherent response based on preventing the problems that have created a world refugee catastrophe. Regrettably it is a process aided and abetted by our major political parties and accepted without examination by the media.

Having a refugee policy that does not address the cause of the problem is unsustainable and must eventually be counterproductive.

The main tribulations that cause people to flee their country of their birth are;

War,. Food and Water Shortages and Lack of basic Healthcare and Education services.

It would be fair to say that most of those fleeing Iraq do so because of the war that we so willingly entered. Even citizens of poor nations do not leave home while ever there is some sense of security and the hope of improvement in conditions. There are over 3 million refugees from Palestine living in neighboring countries and they are there largely because the west, including Australia, gave Israel uncritical support. I suspect if they were asked they would say that they would prefer us to support the UN mandates so that they could have a homeland rather than a shattered life as a refugee. The same could be said of those from Tibet, Burma, East Timor, Papua and many other repressed nations. The ruling juntas are in power because of support from the west, when we buy oil, timber, rare earth metals or precious stones we are supporting the corrupt rulers

In other words, it is our economic system that creates much of the conditions that turn people into the 15.2 million classified as refugees, as well as an estimated 43.3 million forcibly displaced and about 1 billion who go hungry every night, very few of which will every find sanctuary in a friendly nation .

dono
Posted by don, Thursday, 24 May 2012 1:17:22 PM
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Don I can't see there is any middle ground on the illegal immigrant issue.

If you relax your guard and let them in more easily you send a message to hundreds of thousands of wanna be immigrants in Indonesia and Malaysia to 'come on down'.

The current trickle would turn into an uncontrolled torrent with all the economic consequences that this would bring, i.e. social problems and government debt to fund re-settlement services and welfare etc that they will demand.

And how exactly do you fix the political problems in the source countries?

They are sovereign countries and will not take kindly to political interference from Australia.

A message must be sent to the developing world that mass immigration to the west is not the solution to their individual problems. They must be required to demand political change in their own countries, with help from the west where necessary and appropriate, and ifix their own problems.

Mass immigration to the west is neither sustainable nor fair to those from the third world who have already settled in the west and made a life for themselves, let alone those born in the west.
Posted by Boylesy, Thursday, 24 May 2012 2:34:32 PM
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"Err Boylesy, its best to examine the facts before you jump to conclusions. Obviously you mindlessly support
the eco-sustainability driven model of the world, which as I said, is the latest iteration of the discredited
Malthusian principle from the 18th Century. The world population has multiplied numerous times since then yet
there is still more than enough food. In fact, in the past excess food has been dumped at sea"

Thomas Malthus's timing has been discredited but not is prediction.

Perhaps you should read these Atman: http://www.un.org/en/issues/food/taskforce/ and http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/nov2010/food-n27.shtml

The secretary general of the UN no less is concerned about a likely global food crisis, along with many
other high level officials in the UN.

More than enough food......clearly not unless ou believe the UN is part of a global anti-people conspiracy!

Excess food dumped at sea.....would you like to provide some evidence for that Atman......how do we know that
it is nothing more than here say?

"The problem for both you and the author is that neither of you want additional people in this country, yet you
wish to distance yourselves from Tony Abbott, who wants to stem the flow of boat people, just as you do. The
squirming is interesting to watch. My question is how can you guys be 'compassionate' when you don't want
babies or immigrants?"

Strawman arguments!

None of us oppose immigration, merely population growth.
And a policy of zero net population growth does not exclude an annual immigration intake.

I wish to distance myself from Tony Abbott because Tony Abbott does not support zero net population growth.
He bleats about stopping the boats while he would undoubtedly increase the skilled immigration intake to appease
the Coalition's big business donors, who wish Australia's population to be 30 million or more.

Most of us a very compassionate. We would support an increase in our annual humanitarian intake while massively
reducing skilled immigration intake, for an over all reduction in our immigration intake.
Posted by Boylesy, Thursday, 24 May 2012 2:37:37 PM
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There is a clear misunderstanding with the interchangeable term : "boat people","asylum seekers' and illegal immigrants. Lets be honest for change and speak our minds after all we are a democratic country and have the freedom of speech. Whatever these people are they are breaking Australian Law, given the fact they part with huge sums of money, not going through the right channels is a concern . We are not asking the right questions, Where or where does this end? Can the Australian tax payer continue to cover all costs of detention and processing let alone the essential everyday costs? If we are serious about sustainable population then we need to improvise all measures across the board. Australia is not a multicultural country, there is underlying evidence that supports this. Do we end up going down the same road as the UK, where enclaves are formed?WThe world has enough problems and so has this country without adding any more to it.
Posted by purist, Thursday, 24 May 2012 9:56:20 PM
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Agreed Purist.

The UK has gone well beyond multiculturalism into the realms of re-colonisation. That is when you get formation of enclaves and racial tension.

The entirely understandable human reaction of a native population to re-colonisation is hostility and resentment towards the colonists.

I reckon the Brits have done exceptionally well to contain the simmering racial tensions that must be rife through out their society just below the surface.

Imagine the reaction of the Shiite majority of Iraq if the Suni minority embarked on a major recolonisation of Iraq with Suni muslims from Saudi Arabia.

It is time for Britain to reverse their defacto policy of re-colonisation and return their immigration policy to one that fosters genuine multiculturalism.

It is time for Australia to take note of the lessons learned by the Brits and more carefully consider the social impacts of our own immigration policy
Posted by Boylesy, Friday, 25 May 2012 12:15:39 AM
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