Oh dear Melissa, you’ve got it SO wrong!!

Scott Morrison is the last person you should be lambasting.

You are so amazingly off-track. Condemn Rudd for opening up this whole can of worms and severely criticise Gillard for not quickly implementing strong enough measures to fix this fundamental and enormous error of judgement by our former PM, to which she was a major party. But for goodness sake, don’t condemn those who want to see an end to it all, as was achieved under Howard’s policies.

Why on earth people like you just want to promulgate, if not greatly increase the rate of onshore asylum seeking, is beyond me.

Surely those with passionate humanitarian concerns should be directing them through Australia’s formal offshore immigration and aid programs.

The bottom line is surely NOT about how well we can treat all those who come to our shores or our waters seeking asylum, but rather how well we can contribute as a nation to the world’s refugee, quality-of-life and sustainability issues.

PLEASE, broaden your horizons…. and get right away from the incredibly narrow and terrible misguided notion that if our politicians advocate anything to make life anything other than as easy as possible for onshore asylum seekers, that they must be in a race to the bottom!

This country is in terminal decline , mass immigration or anything else that accelerates the process and breaks the Centrist monopoly is wholly desirable from the point of view of a revolutionary.
As I keep saying to liberals and Leftists, it's no problem for me but it's a problem for you, Fascism and Patriarchy goes down a treat with Third Worlders ;)

Ludwig

Life has never been easy for asylum seekers coming to Australia, but the current government hit a new low in the using the misery of indefinite mandatory detention in some godforsaken camp an active policy tool under the “no advantage” policy

Ludwig, why do you continually bleat that we have to be cruel to people who are by and large actually refugees who have a well founded fear of death, torture or persecution if they go home?

Should the neighbours around Syria force them all back because those who can't leave are still in danger?

The law states clearly that everyone has the right to seek asylum and that is nothing to do with our migration policy.

Hi Mellisa,

A de-facto open borders policy, will design in never ending population growth, until a crisis occurs to halt it.

On current trends, we are now looking at a 40-50 million population, within your lifetime.

Many "left" population boosters are in denial over the link between population growth and habitat/species loss .

However, growth in human numbers, is identified as the major driver of habitat loss and species extinction by : Sir David Attenborough , Melinda Gates , Bindi Urwin , CSIRO, Australian Academy of Science , ACF, WWF and the United Nations.

As a refinement of your case, we need to fit the refugees into a balanced migration program . Currently, 80,000 leave Australia permanently each year, so the refugee intake would fall within this number.

Best regards,

Ralph

a well founded fear of death, torture or persecution if they go home?
Marilyn Shepherd,
All of them ? Even the brainwashed soldiers of religion/ignorance ?

Ralph

Bindi Irwin as an authority. Gee, it must be true!

Migration does not add to the human population, it just rearranges it. And the number of asylum seekers is far too small to make a discernible difference to Australia’s environmental pressures.

Hello Marilyn, it’s been quite a while since we had a chat.

You and I have been over and over this subject on OLO over the last few years.

Obviously if we treat onshore asylum seekers just as you would want them to be treated, we’d be opening the proverbial floodgates... or at least promulgating a considerable rate of arrivals in an ongoing manner with no end in sight.

Do you deny this?

<< Life has never been easy for asylum seekers coming to Australia, but the current government hit a new low in the using the misery of indefinite mandatory detention in some godforsaken camp an active policy tool under the “no advantage” policy >>

Rhian, why should onshore asylum seekers have an advantage over offshore refugees that are chosen to be brought to Australia as part of our formal immigration program (or that don’t get chosen because their places get taken by onshore refugees)?

And why should our government not be implementing deterrence measures, such as offshore detention, to try and cut down if not halt the arrival of asylum seekers?

Migration does not add to the human population, it just rearranges it.
Rhian,
Why did you leave this sentence short ? Why not finish it properly by continuing with"and also
deranges the human population to levels which only have one outcome, disarray in every which way".

Rhian,

Bindi Urwin as a young female, should have her views addressed, rather than your scorn , which does you discredit .

The point you missed , was that population growth must be stopped globally and Australia is part of the Globe.

Australia is losing it's habitat and species diversity.

Ralph

Labor's original sin in it's founding was overt Racism, reaching a pinnacle with their White Australia Policy, confirmed by Whitlams hate of Vietnamese and just reprised by Julia's 457 bile.

The are only one set of scum sucking, bottom feeders, the "whatever it takes Party".

Ludwig,
To speak of “advantage” in these circumstances is grotesque. What you are saying is that, because there are desperate children rotting in refugee camps in Africa and Asia, the desperate children who arrive on our shores should be rot in indefinite imprisonment too.

Individual,
Australia is a migrant society. More than a quarter of us were born overseas, and a further quarter have at least one overseas-born parent. Yet I don’t see a society in “disarray”. By most measures we are one of the most successful societies on earth – ranking second on the UN’s Human Development Index, for example.

Ralph,
Of course Bindi is entitled to her opinion, as are you and I, and others in this forum, and my next door neighbour’s teenage daughter. But Bindi is not an expert in demography or human settlement or even ecology, so her opinion carries no more weight than the rest of us. Your argument was constructed as an appeal to authority, and she isn’t one.

How we treat asylum seekers has zero effect on global population growth. This is a giant, smelly red herring intended to provide a fig-leaf of moral respectability to a position that is fundamentally inhumane.

I have greater respect here for the views of Jay of Melbourne. I disagree with almost everything Jay says, but he is at least honest about his motives and coherent in his arguments.

The lowest act so far has been the invitation that Greens/Rudd/Gillard sent to illegal immigrants leading to over a thousand deaths (including children).Really can't go much lower than that.

I'd let them in, on the condition that every one of them spend 2 years in work camps in out northern, or southern national parks.

They would have to spend that time clearing feral weed & other plant infestations, & removing the dangerous build up of highly flammable litter.

They would have to supply verifiable evidence of their place of origin, & full information of their method of transit to Oz to be eligible to stay. No use of legal aid should EVER be permitted.

No access to be granted to welfare until a minimum of 5 years tax returns proves they have been self supporting.

They would have to be refused re-entry to Oz if at any time they chose to voluntarily return to their country of origin, especially if that return was to select a wife. This activity proves that their country of origin holds little if any danger for them.

Any even minor law breaking, either by design, or incompetence should lead to immediate deportation, with no recourse to the courts.

Under such conditions, I would expect almost all such people would make excellent citizens, & be an asset, rather than the drain most are today.

Runner it is the wars that have caused millions of deaths, those who drowned did so only because Australia let them and then used that as an excuse to torture others.

There is something sick in the minds of the likes of Ludwig and others like you that think that people who ask us for help are sub-human things to be demonised and brutalised because we feel like it.

For the last time - the resettlement of a few thousand refugees from overseas is nothing more than an expensive con, we don't accept anyone from the camps because they simply have no way of applying to even get here unless they have family and that family has to apply in Melbourne or Sydney.

The only people we have any obligation to are those who arrive here.

It's on the DIAC website and the UNHCR website you lazy cowards.

Hasbeen asylum seekers are not criminals, they are refugees forced out of their own countries by the likes of the taliban.

Why is it that you want to punish them again.

Rian,

You have done it again ! Bagged Bindi Urwin and ignored Sir David Attenborough , Melinda Gates , CSIRO, Australian Academy of Science , ACF, WWF and the United Nations.

A sad specist, Rian . Like racism and sexism , specism should be minimised .

You are a dedicated propagandist promoting habitat and species destruction, while cloaking yourself in open borders nonsense.

Of course you can have refugees, within a balanced migration design.

Ralph

Who said anything about punishing them Marilyn.

All I want to do is sort out those who are pulling a con trick, from those who just want our welfare, from those who just might make good citizens, if we let them in. I see nothing wrong in expecting them to work for their keep. Please explain why you do.

I refuse any responsibility for those who merely wish to con us. It is up to them to make sure we can confirm who they are, & whether they are in any actual danger at home.

If they can return home, [which often turns out to be other than claimed] to buy a wife, they obviously were lying to us in the first place.

Just because we have a lying immigrant in Canberra is no reason to fill the whole country with them.

Ralph
I haven’t “bagged” Bindi Irwin (I’ve even spelled her name right). Some of the “authorities” you quote actually qualify as authorities, but I challenge you to point to any one of them that links our asylum seeker numbers to environmental pressures.

You still haven’t demonstrated any link between the two, because there isn’t one.

You say I am “a dedicated propagandist promoting habitat and species destruction”. Perhaps you can point to some evidence of this?

Marilyn

'Runner it is the wars that have caused millions of deaths, those who drowned did so only because Australia let them and then used that as an excuse to torture others. '

I appreiciate that Marilyn which means millions are waiting in camps to come to places like Australia. How many do you think we should take? 5 million, 10 million? And of course why should those who pay people smugglers and throw away documents get in before the many who have been tortured and yet remain in camps.

Rhian,

You point out that Australia still ranks very high on the UN Human Development Index, so human well being can't be suffering that much - as yet, although we are becoming more unequal and many people are suffering severely from skyrocketing housing costs. Nevertheless, we are giving our environment a terrible hammering, and this is eventually likely to affect humans as well.

The Australian Conservation Foundation has nominated human population growth in Australia as a key threatening process under the Environmental Protection Act. Their submission is here, and backed up by a great many references to the scientific literature.

http://www.acfonline.org.au/sites/default/files/resources/EPBC_nomination_22-3-10.pdf

Note what they say about the secondary effects, the damage that is done to produce the exports to pay for the imports needed for the bigger population.

We rank at the bottom of the developed world in international comparisons of environmental management. The Conference Board of Canada puts us at the bottom of the 17 developed countries they compare, below the United States.

http://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/details/environment.aspx#context

The Environmental Performance Index ranks us at number 48, in the group of modest performers, containing such countries as Bulgaria and Egypt. We are just behind Georgia, the former Soviet republic, and just ahead of the US.

http://epi.yale.edu/epi2012/rankings

What do you have against letting other species live too or not trashing the world our children and grandchildren will inherit? If you are one of those Christians who believe that only people matter and that wrecking the environment will make Jesus come sooner, then go and read Psalm 104.

Asylum seeker numbers are still relatively small, but the experience from Europe with letting them self-select is that the numbers snowball, with a great many unfounded claims from people who just want "a better life". It is extemely difficult or impossible to remove failed asylum seekers. See these Home Office statistics from the UK

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

Note that those half million claims between 1997 and 2004 did not include the dependants who would arrive later.

So far as the 457 visas are concerned and legal immigration in general, some immigration is fine, with a number of cultural and educational advantages, but the numbers are completely over the top. The following link leads to a graph showing our total real GDP and real GDP per capita since 1996. Note that they stopped going up together after 1998. Real GDP per capita has been stagnant since 2006, while total GDP has surged ahead, i.e., the economic growth is just from having more people, while the average person is no better off, despite the mining boom and the high Australian dollar.

http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2012/05/highrise-harry-wants-more-people/

Divergence,

If you unpick those studies, the areas where Australia scores worst are air quality and greenhouses gases. I’d accept we can do better on GHG emissions, but I think the air quality metrics are wrong. SO2 and NOX emissions are generally measured as concentrations in urban areas, because of their effects on human health. Using a per capita or GDP linked emissions measure is pretty meaningless. Air quality in Australian cities typically compares well with other developed economies, let alone developing ones.

There is no direct correlation between these measures of environmental quality and extinctions or loss of biodiversity.

I don’t think trashing the environment is acceptable, still less that accelerating Armageddon is a good thing. But I do not accept that there is any correlation at all between the environmental concerns your raise – some of which I share – and the way we treat asylum seekers.

Even if one accepts that there is a direct proportional correlation between population growth and environmental damage – and I’d question that – the fact remains that the annual asylum seekers intake is less that 0.1% of Australia’s population. By all means let’s have a debate about 457s and baby bonuses, but please don’t make the environment an excuse for treating people who have already suffered terribly in an abominable fashion.

asylum seekers are not criminals,
Marilyn Shepherd,
That's like saying all non-assylum seekers are bad people. The question is how many are actually genuine asylum seekers ?
I have been through this in the late 60"s when Europe was invaded in exactly the same manner.

Rhian, you replied:

<< What you are saying is that, because there are desperate children rotting in refugee camps in Africa and Asia, the desperate children who arrive on our shores should be rot in indefinite imprisonment too. >>

You’re for doing a ‘Marilyn’ and jumping to the ludicrous end of the spectrum in your reply to my first question: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=14795#255136

<< …should rot in indefinite imprisonment… >>

Dear oh dear! Detention facilities are nothing like prisons, and detention is not indefinite. It is not particularly long for most, being the longest for those whose refugee claims are the hardest to sort out.

As for my second question, you have offered no response. So I am left to assume that you feel that no deterrence measures should be put in place that would in any way impact on the quick and smooth assimilation and facilitation of arrivals in as much comfort as we can afford them …and that an ongoing quite considerable rate of arrivals if not a much-increased rate is fine by you, bugger the expense to the tax-payer and the fractious consequences that it is having on Australian society.

Oh, and you are presumably perfectly happy to facilitate onshore asylum seekers at the expense of thousands that would have been brought here under our formal refugee/immigration program but now have to stay 'rotting in refugee camps in Africa and Asia', and who are definitely more needy than those who pay people-smugglers to get them here.

<< There is something sick in the minds of the likes of Ludwig and others like you that think that people who ask us for help are sub-human things to be demonised and brutalised because we feel like it. >>

Wow Marilyn, as old CJ Morgan used to say; get help!!

I asked you a simple and highly pertinent question, in the interests of healthy debate: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=14795#255135

But of course, you haven’t responded. ( :<(

Ludwig and others like you that think that people who ask us for help are sub-human things to be demonised
Marilyn Shepherd,
That is about one of the most idiotic statements ever posted here. I have put to you a couple of times, if you really feel so strongly about the asylum seekers then help them not becoming asylum seekers in the first place. Go to their countries & help them there so they won't need to pack up & leave. If you happen to run into their oppressors & fail then you'll get an idea how we feel about the likes of you here.

Rhian,

You are cherry-picking. In the long run, our greenhouse gas emissions may indeed turn out to be the worst thing that we are doing to the planet, so it is no wonder that they figure heavily in the rankings. Nevertheless, we have a host of other problems. such as perhaps the highest rate of mammal extinctions in the world.

http://www.csiro.au/Portals/Multimedia/CSIROpod/Australian-Mammal-Extinction-Crisis.aspx

The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) is saying (my first link in my preceding post) that a lot of these issues are linked directly or indirectly to population growth. If you are not prepared to believe the ACF, perhaps you might be more impressed by this summary of our own government's last State of the Environment Report. They also mention population as a cause in some of them.

http://www.environment.gov.au/soe/2011/summary/index.html

The asylum seeker numbers are not a significant issue yet, so far as the environment is concerned. The costs, far greater than if we picked the refugees to help, are diverting desperately needed resources from our own people who are coping with understaffed, underfunded hospitals, lack of disability support, death trap roads, etc. I am not convinced that we couldn't go the way of Europe. Yabby once pointed out on another thread that an entrepreneur could just buy up some old sheep transport ships and bring in many thousands of people at a time. Think of how many that they could get onto an old oil tanker!

Ludwig

It may be the “ludicrous end of the spectrum”, but we really are locking up children with no indication of a release date on the basis that freeing them would confer unfair ‘advantage”. Do you disagree with this policy? I certainly do.

“Detention facilities are nothing like prisons.” Well they are, to the extent that people are locked up there and not free to go, and the facilities are pretty basic. Looking at the facilities on Manus Island, I’d much prefer to be in an Australian prison.

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1718871/Seven-families-sent-to-Manus-Island

The answer to your second question is pretty much the same as the first. It is immoral to lock people up indefinitely as a deterrent when they have committed no crime and in many cases have already suffered dreadfully.

Most of the people who arrive here are found to be genuine refugees, so onshore processing is no more likely than offshore processing to admit people “at the expense” of those in refugee camps.

Divergence

You say “The asylum seeker numbers are not a significant issue yet, so far as the environment is concerned” Exactly my point. So why raise the environment it in a discussion about asylum seekers? I repeat, the environment argument is a fig leaf for people trying to find a morally defensible rationale for what is a fundamentally immoral stance.

Rhian,

As I also pointed out, the asylum seeker numbers did become significantly large in Europe. See Christopher Caldwell's "Reflections on the Revolution in Europe" or just my previous link to the very large number of claims in the UK between 1997 and 2004, which also led to the admission of additional very large numbers of dependants. Where is your evidence that it couldn't happen here as well? Do we need to wait until there is a really serious problem before taking any action, even if we can easily foresee the potential for trouble? I don't have a problem with taking several thousand refugees a year, just with having them self-select. Why would I need a fig leaf?

Numbers of legal immigrants in the regular immigration program (with about half, and possibly more, of 457 visa holders going on to permanent residence) are large enough to have an effect on the environment, as we would soon stabilize our population without net immigration. At the current rate, we will be doubling in numbers every 43 years.