Hi Marilyn.

You are suggesting that a "Hazara" born in Pakistan is a "Hazara", not a Pakistani. When did you decide that you wanted to be a racist too? Your above statement implies that what defines a person is their ethnicity and culture, not their nationality.

Gee Marilyn, I think just like you do. I think that what defines an "Australian" is primarily their ethnicity and their cultural heritage. Although I will accept people of other ethnicities as "Australian", provided that they largely accept the values, attitudes and behaviours of my people. What confuses me, is why you accept that "Hazaras" in Pakistan are still "Hazaras", but the instant that any one of them sticks their big toe on the soil of Australia, they instantly stop being "Hazaras" and become "Australians"?

I can no more accept an "Hazara" as an Australian, any more than a "Hazara" would accept me as an "Hazara", just because I was a European living in Hazaraland. If ethnicity is not important to social identity and social inclusion, then every person born in Australia is now an "aborigine." Your attitude is a curious one. You seem to think that every race, religion and ethnicity on planet Earth has a right to maintain their own cultural identity, except white Europeans.

I am a white European who wishes to maintain my own cultural identity, and who wishes my country to remain an island of peace in a sea of multicultural turmoil. Multiculturalism is exactly like Socialism. How many times does it need to fail before supposedly intelligent people like yourself realise that it is a bad idea?

The Socialists tried to create a class blind society and they failed because they ignored basic human nature. You Multiculturalists are trying to create a race blind society and you are going to fail also, for the same reason. Birds of a feather just keep flocking together no matter what the Commissar or the Human Rights Commissioner says. Australia's growing ethnic crime rates and welfare dependency combined with race riots and terrorism are the portents of things to come.

At this point I would like to thank all who took the trouble to comment. I learnt some useful things.

For example, on the point of Trotsky coining the term “racist”, I hadn’t realised before that he wrote in English, let alone had sufficient command of the language to coin new words. Live and learn.

It’s also instructive to see what sort of people support the Lib and ALP world view on asylum seekers. Everyone who votes for these two parties should read the comments here to see what company they are keeping.

Finally, I invite anyone who didn’t get the point of the article to take a course on statistics and data interpretation. It beats running with raw emotion for understanding the world.

PhilipM,
Statistics of a political nature are never accurate & close to the truth because the people who write them are academic background bureaucrats who don't know the meaning of honesty & integrity.

It is obvious that both push and pull factors are involved in asylum seeking. This paper from the UK shows asylum claims there and the proportions from year to year where refugee claims were accepted (a lot less than here).

http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/sites/files/migobs/Briefing%20-%20Migration%20to%20the%20UK%20-%20Asylum.pdf

Note that asylum claims did go down after 2001, but nothing like to the same extent as in Australia. Philip Machanick is drawing a long bow when he claims that the Pacific solution and other policies of the Howard government made little difference.

Why not plot the absolute numbers as well as or instead of the difference from the previous year?

Hi PhillipM

So, you find it "instructive" about "the sort of people who support the Lib/Lab view of asylum seekers?

Since almost the entire Australian electorate vote for either the Libs or the Labs, you are self evidently sneering at almost everybody in Australia who do not belong to your tertiary educated social caste. Could I suggest that the primary motivation of you and your bourgeoisie bohemians mates is a compulsive need to to think that you are better than everybody else? There was once a time when educated western young people used to laugh at snobs and moral puritans, but somewhere along the line the educated elites decided that they would become snobs and moral puritans themselves.

You and your little social climbing socialites mates think that you are so much better than your social inferiors in the working class, and morally superior to your parents in the business class. So you cultivate tastes and attitudes calculated to get up the noses of everybody who does not have a crummy Artz degree and who does not work for the public service.

It is all just vanity. And I do not think it wise that Australia should commit social suicide just to satisfy "the sort of people" like yourself and your need to believe that you are better than everybody else.

I find it astonishing that a South African like yourself who needed to flee multicultural South Africa would want tom inflict the same thing on the country he chose to flee to. But I suppose the need to think that you are a superior human being is a stronger motivator to any thought of self preservation.

It is because of foreigners like yourself who flee their dysfunctional countries then come to my country expressing contempt for Australians and presuming to tell us that we are doing everything wrong, that makes "the sort of people like me" oppose the immigration of "the sort of people like you."

<< The UNHCR is also warning that efforts to try and integrate non-Melanesian refugees into the socio-economic and cultural life of PNG will be problematic>> http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-26/unhcr-australia-png-refugees-asylum/4845628

Bet you the UNHCR would NOT put up with such boganism in OZ!

Perhaps the UN would find the PNG solution more palatable if we marketed it as our attempt to break-down PNG's xenophobia.