Deterrence sounds good. It satisfies common sense ideas of crime and punishment. But it generally fails. - See more at: http://newmatilda.com/2013/07/23/png-solution-wont-stop-deaths-sea#sthash.ML76fX8a.dpuf
Lexi,
Those sentences from Mathilda are totally wrong because we never deployed deterrents so it's no wonder it is seen as a failure.
So, tell us again punishment is a failure after you have tried it , not before.

Loudmouth,

Humans migrate.

There are may displaced at the moment.

If Australia thinks it can actually halt the flow and/or still maintain some semblance of a reputation as an Enlightened respecter of human rights or, for that matter, international respect for its "hardline"...good luck to it.

Hi Loudmouth.

Good point

It was always a lie that if we only raised our limit the boats would stop

______________________________________

@ Poriot

<<If Australia thinks it can actually halt the flow and/or still maintain some semblance of a reputation as an Enlightened respecter of human rights or, for that matter, international respect for its "hardline"...good luck to it>>

So what are you admitting, Poriot:
2,000,000
20,000,000
200,000,000

As the same principle would apply to ANY number!

and I hope you have facilities in place since <<humans defecate>>

Dear Luciferase,

I hope that the following link may answer your question
as to what both major parties could do to try to solve this
complex issue:

http://www.theage.com.au/comment/how-to-solve-the-boat-problem-without-cruelty-20130722-2qeof.html

Perhaps looking at the reasons people get on boats in the
first place may be a good place to start in trying to find
solutions rather than punishing people for doing it.

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

As I've stated previously -

30,000 to 40,000 people a year should not be an issue.
It never has been. It is only a trickle of humanity.

Individual,

All our government policies to date have been deterrents.
Unless of course you don't see mandatory off shore processing,
"No advantage test," placing people on Manus Island and Nauru
for years at a time, et cetera not as deterrents. Mental health
experts would disagree with you.

SPQR,

If the numbers of displaced persons remain the same, I doubt if there's anything Australia can do (this end) to stem the flow.

That's the point I was making.

However, it'll be interesting watching us try.

(There's no point in asking me how many I'd admit - my opinion has nothing to do with actualities)

Lexi-

<In the late 1970s and early 1980s moral leadership
was demonstrated by the Fraser government assisting
Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees.>

It wasn't moral leadership, it was arrogant, cultural, Melbourne,Sydney,elitist,"we know better than you," leadership. I can assure you, if it had been put to a referendum the Australian voters would have rejected it. It was well known at the time, that opinion polls indicated that 70% of Australians were against it.

Keating and Hawke also presided over this mass immigration, and
Hawke was asked by Kerry Anne Kennerley who then hosted the Midday
Show and interviewed him, "what he said to the fact that opinion
polls showed 70% of the Australian population were against mass
immigration from Vietnam and Cambodia.

Hawke said, "it's not the first time the majority have been wrong
and the minority right."

How do you explain the bomb attacks and foiled bomb attacks by
immigrants to Australia, Britian and America, Mr.Fraser, Mr.Hawke,
and Mr. Keating. It is an indication that the majority of Australian people got it right and you got it wrong.

You say we should look at what these people are running from
Lexi. I told you that, in one of my previous posts here.

They are running from persecution from other tribes and
religious sects. Do you see, Mr Hawke and Mr. Frazer how tribes
kill each other over control of countries. Proves once
again you were wrong and the 70%majority were right.

There was no internet back in the 1970s and the newspapers were
too afraid of political correctness and being called racist to
publish anything about dissent from the mainstream population.
The internet has changed that and now we are hearing the previously
suppressed, real opinions, of a lot of the Australian population.

The very fact, that we have millions of people fleeing from persecution by other tribes and religious sects, proves that Fraser and Hawke were wrong and the Australian people who weren't brain- washed by University Academics and do-gooder-hippie-leftists(the Greens), were right all along.