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.

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.

"Apparently the only thing we are not running out of is stupidity."

Yes! Case in point you Atman!

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.

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.

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.