Spar you are about the only one with any brains., as I mentioned there are thousands of empty units in Dubai owned by the Sheiks, for goodness sake fill them up with your own kind, that is Muslims, why aren't people condemning them, but no, lets brand Australia as a country of not wanting to accept refugees, we will accept legitimate refugees, and I for one am very happy for these people to come here, but not the leaky boat brigade. My taxes are for people that I want to accept here and nearly all people agree with my sentiment
Remember it is the wealth brigade who cause nearly all of our problems, whether it be through the billions making war weapons to displace ordinary people in some country where they should not be, or differences in religious opinion mainly by the wealthy clergy who dominate what the people should believe in, and they stupidly believe it.
Australia is a very considerate country, so for goodness sake lets look beyond our noses in other areas which are causing these refugee problems in the first place

Lexi,

40,000 - thank you.

Poirot,

So you don't the courage to put up a figure ? Yet you still put your oar in. No doubt you still would, no matter what the annual intake was. Why do you bother ?

Now, Lexi, if 40,000 is the cap on annual intake, do you include any 'illegals' in that ? Or are they over and above ?

The point about a cap, with no 'over and above', is that there would be no intake of 'illegals', none, they get sent/flown back to their point of departure, which in all likelihood would NOT be their original country. If that started to happen, how many would chance it and come to Indonesia, to spend precious money to get on a leaky boat, only to be brought back in due course to the place they had left ?

1 % of refugees get settled anywhere in the world each year. At 46 million, that's 460,000, of which - if we take 20,000 - our share would be quite generous, for our population - 4 % of refugees, 0.3 % of the world's population.

But Poirot will find something to whinge about - and then duck out of the ring. Takes all types.

Joe

We should remember that against all previous convention it was Howard who first played the race card (and that's exactly what it was) for electoral advantage.

He was the one who demonised the asylum seekers themselves as "not being the sort of people" we want in the country, encouraged by a deliberate lie about children overboard - and in response to the Cronulla riots, said only that racism "did not exist this country".

Rudd initially took a softer approach by shifting the blame from the passengers to the people smugglers and the opposition has also taken that angle.

Now as they allegedly sympathise with the plight of asylum seekers both sides are crying crocodile tears over those who have drowned but are trapped by a media manufactured public attitude of fear and loathing.

Neither side can win on this and both will ultimately pay a price, as will our international reputation. They are playing "Bad Cop - Worse Cop" with voters.

The asylum seekers themselves are not the problem - they are the symptom of another problem that lies elsewhere and one we are partly responsible for.

Hi wobbles,

So what's YOUR limit ? 20,000 ? 30,000 ? 40,000 ? 100,000 ? No limit at all ?

46 million. What can and should we do about it ? Yes. Work like buggery to help with the problems at source, back in the Congo or Afghanistan or Syria or wherever, yes, that's step one.

But step two: what to do about the refugees from conflicts that we can't resolve?

Millions of desperate people. Yes, we may see the hundreds here and there on boats - terrible. SHY must cry herself to sleep every night. But those other poor bastards, stuck in sh!tholes in vast desert camps, 300,000 here, 100,000 there - people who will never, never have enough to get on a f%c&ing boat, but who have put their names down and filled out the right forms - years ago ! - do you cry for them ?

Despicable. Sometimes I'm ashamed to be on the Left.

Joe

Wobbles,

I seem to recall, Howard's pacific solution was in response to 300 people drowning on the SievX.

As I said in a different thread, whenever a leftie starts using the term racist, it is generally because they have run out of rational arguments.

Mental health experts would disagree with you.
Lexi,
Your mental health "experts" know zilch about saturation indoctrinated fanaticism. If the "experts" kept out of it all we probably could have a solution in a day.