Genevieve, I am sorry that 100 million people are being born into this world every year, mostly from priest, mullah, and witch doctor ridden societies, where they won't wear condoms and they breed like flies. And I am sorry that they their population growth means that most of them are going to live miserable lives. But I do not agree with your implication, that I should consider it moral and compassionate for me to allow for these people to simply barge into my country and expect my people to keep them.

Especially since the "refugee" areas of Sydney are not only renowned for their high incidence of welfare dependency, but for their very high rates of serious criminal behaviour. Cabramatta is now the Heroin capitol of Australia, and "the Gaza Strip" (as the NSW Police call the Bankstown area), with its multiple street shootings every week, has become the Chicago of the South Pacific. And let's not even mention the weekend ethnic soccer games which routinely turn into inter suburban ethnic cleansing riots.

In 1999-2000, Genevieve, 70 Australian girls got gang raped by Muslim race hate rape packs in Sydney. Now think. You allow people to barge into Australia who have a religious belief that women are inferior to men. And that men have a duty to punish wicked women. And that women must obey the dictates of Islam or they deserve to be raped. And if they do get raped, it is all their own fault. Then their own religious leader (Sheik Hilali) publically confirms this and tells his parishioners that it was all the "cat meat" Aussie females fault. And then you wonder why so many Aussie women are being raped by Muslims? And you want me to have compassion so that more of them can barge into Australia?

How many more Aussie girls are you going to sacrifice on your altar of "compassion" before you realise that your first duty is to protect your own?

Thanks Genevieve, for a nicely thought-out article. It may be compassionate to want to stop people taking dangerous journeys in rickety boats, but true compassion would also consider what circumstances might make people desperate enough to take that risk.

LEGO

People are not fleeing these countries because their cultures are repressive. They are leaving because their countries have become war zones. At present the main countries of refugee origin worldwide are Sri Lanka, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia – all war zones or recent ex-war zones and all of them wars in which the West has played a deliberate hand.

In the case of Sri Lanka, which is overwhelmingly the largest country of origin for asylum seekers to Australia since 2009, the West created the current desperate surge of Tamil refugees by declaring the Tamil struggle against Sinhalese persecution as ‘terrorism’. Australia meekly kowtowed to the UN and endorsed this injustice. Had the West acknowledged the legitimacy of the Tamil struggle, the war could have ended very differently.

However, it suits the mainstream media narrative to frame the surge in boat numbers since 2009 to the Rudd/Gillard government’s failure to maintain Howard’s tough stance, even though their policies are not all that different to Howard’s.

There will always be people leaving their countries of origin to seek a better life and more freedom, but it’s wars that create an explosion in the numbers of desperate people seeking refuge in other countries. The best long-term solution to the crisis of refugees currently swamping the world is to minimise Western interference in so many countries.

I suspect Adam Smith would agree.

Genevieve,
We may genuinely feel compassion and sympathy for the baby gazelle as it is ripped apart by the lioness or leopard to feed its young, but should we not also feel compassion for that lioness or leopard and their young, for the threat to their survival were it not for the mother gazelle and her young providing that means for their survival?

Who is the gazelle, and who is the lion or leopard in this debate?

As "citizens of the world" you would appear to paint us as the lion, the aggressor, yet in reality we stand as the gazelle, offering ourselves for "lunch".

The secret to "life" is sustainable balance, but humankind, as the most capable and most aggressive of all species, past and present, has sought to defy that primary law of "life" by unfettered and ill-conceived population growth - growth which has pitted man against man not merely for "survival" but for elevated wealth, power and survival "security".

"We" did not create the problems at base of the "refugee" diaspora, "they" created it themselves, unwittingly or no, but by displaced "sympathy" we may jeopardize our own security, our own way of life, and to what benefit? Will those problems "at home" disappear if we take ten, a hundred, even a thousand times more "refugees"? No.
A wider and genuinely "global" solution is needed.

Europe opened its borders, not in the interests of "humanity" but to expedite trade and the accumulation of wealth. It is paying the price.
In the middle-east "sectarian" versus "secular" interests are waging war, either to gain (or regain) their "way of life" or to impose a different and far more restrictive one - with the "innocents" caught in the middle.
Do we take sides - even if we had the means?

We have "stood up" many times in the theatre of human conflict, but this situation requires a global response, and the last thing we need is to be overrun by the "innocents".
The solution lies at root cause, and we should not kid ourselves otherwise.

To Killarney.

All of those unstable countries that you mentioned have some things in common, they are all multicultural countries where the different ethnicities are all killing each other off and trying to set up monocultural mini states. What does that tell you about the stability of multicultural societies? Why do you want a multicultural state in Australia that will destroy your peaceful and prosperous community and emulate self evident failure?

The Tamils immigrated into Sri Lanka and they kept their sense of ethnic and cultural uniqueness, and then lived in Tamil enclaves which eventually demanded self determination. When they did not get it, they engaged in terrorism. How long before they do exactly the same thing in Australia?

The Australian electorate are incensed at the stupidity of the Rudd/Gillard Labor government for the present boat people situation. They don't need the media to tell them that what is going on is pure insanity.

People may always try to seek better lives in the West, but unfortunately, we westerners already live here. And we are getting fed up of the entire Third World just decamping to our society and demanding that we feed them, house them and pay them welfare. Look at Europe and see us in twenty years. The Euros are broke. 50% of the Muslims in Europe are on the dole. All that the Euros got for their generosity was race riots, terrorism, bankrupt economies, and a crime wave.

Instead of the Third world just hopping on boats and heading for the west, could they emulate the Asians and reform their own stupid cultures and religions? Try getting their population explosion under control so that they live in prosperous societies like we and the Asians do. Just in case you haven't noticed, Asia forty years ago was just as bad as Africa today. Now look at the Asian miracle, and ask yourself why the Asians did it, and the Africans and Muslims can't do the same thing?

To Killarney.

All of those unstable countries that you mentioned have some things in common, they are all multicultural countries where the different ethnicities are all killing each other off and trying to set up monocultural mini states. What does that tell you about the stability of multicultural societies? Why do you want a multicultural state in Australia that will destroy your peaceful and prosperous community and emulate self evident failure?

The Tamils immigrated into Sri Lanka and they kept their sense of ethnic and cultural uniqueness, and then lived in Tamil enclaves which eventually demanded self determination. When they did not get it, they engaged in terrorism. How long before they do exactly the same thing in Australia?

The Australian electorate are incensed at the stupidity of the Rudd/Gillard Labor government for the present boat people situation. They don't need the media to tell them that what is going on is pure insanity.

People may always try to seek better lives in the West, but unfortunately, we westerners already live here. And we are getting fed up of the entire Third World just decamping to our society and demanding that we feed them, house them and pay them welfare. Look at Europe and see us in twenty years. The Euros are broke. 50% of the Muslims in Europe are on the dole. All that the Euros got for their generosity was race riots, terrorism, bankrupt economies, and a crime wave.

Instead of the Third world just hopping on boats and heading for the west, could they emulate the Asians and reform their own stupid cultures and religions? Try getting their population explosion under control so that they live in prosperous societies like we and the Asians do. Just in case you haven't noticed, Asia forty years ago was just as bad as Africa today. Now look at the Asian miracle, and ask yourself why the Asians did it, and the why Africans and Muslims can't do the same thing?

Our lies and distortions are just that.

While Bob Carr is whining about 25,000 refugees here he is praising Lebanon for supporting the equivalent of 5.5 million here if we pulled the same weight.




Bob Carr Bob Carr ‏@bobjcarr 17 Jun
The world must recognise the extraordinary generosity shown by #Syria’s neighbours in sharing the burden of this crisis.

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Bob Carr Bob Carr ‏@bobjcarr 17 Jun
Speaking @ QT: #Lebanon hosts around 1mil Syrians, including 500k refugees - equivalent to 5.5mil refugees arriving in Aus in same timeframe

What we are doing is telling a victim of rape on the door step that we won't help because someone else might have been raped over in the next suburb.

@Marilyn,

<<While Bob Carr is whining about 25,000 refugees here he is praising Lebanon for supporting the equivalent of 5.5 million here if we pulled the same weight>>

The figure for Oz is actually more like 40,000 (and 200,000 if you add in all the relations who will inevitably be sponsored).

And here's the rub -- the reality check. The ONLY reason why Oz has not --as yet-- received 5.5million is becasue 5.5 million have not AS YET boated to our shores.

Our "border controls" wouldn't stopped them.
Our vetting processes wouldnt deter them.
And our Marilyn's would welcome them

Under our current approach, if 5.5 million set off for OZ, 5.5 million would get here, AND NO DOUBT (to quote the advocates mantra) OVER 90% "WOULD BE FOUND TO BE GENUINE"!

And our Marilyn's would welcome them
SPQR,
Yes & when it comes to support them our Marilyns would nowhere be found. I wonder how our Marilyns would react if we offered them the privilege of looking after all those they invite here. They could just sign their willingness of financial support on their tax form & their tax return could be used to support their friends. I'll gladly stay out of their way.

LEGO

I stopped supporting multiculturalism as a policy at least a decade ago, once I understood its real agenda. Multiculturalism has very little to do with the touchy-feely, global-tolerance image it cultivates. Its real agenda is to destroy cultures, to break down traditional tribal bonds and plant a worldwide individualistic, consumerist culture in their place.

Multiculturalism Western-style is about instilling a pervasive guilt among Westerners to accept the overflow of refugees from countries the West is destabilising, invading and bombing – that is, the refugees the neighbours of those countries can no longer cope with.

Sure, traditional internal tensions are rife in these countries, as they have also been in the West over many centuries, but these are being made irreconcilable by foreign interference. Unless Western foreign policy desists from its relentless destruction of other countries for financial and strategic gain, Australia’s puny Little Dutch Boy attempts to stem the tide of desperate people coming here will collapse over time, regardless of what political party is in power.

If you do not advocate multiculturalism, Killarney, then there is hope for you yet. I think you may be a border line trendy lefty who still has some socialist baggage inhibiting (his or her) thought processes, but I think you are smart enough to be deprogrammed.

The ones who can never be programmed think entirely in moral absolutes like Lexi and they are the intellectual equivalent of The Flat Earth Society.

Kilarney, After Sri Lanka the greatest source fir boat people Is Iran.There is no war or disturbance there. In fact they even hold elections where some people who hold different opinions to the dictatorial mullahs actually get elected.